Over 2,000 players banned from Apex for teaming

Cheating and teaming in Apex Legends has long been a major point of contention in the player community. Thankfully, after today, there are fewer cheaters in the game. 2,051 less, to be exact.

Conor Ford, known more commonly by his handle “Hideouts,” posted on Twitter Tuesday to reveal the large ban wave to the public.

Most Apex players that have spent any amount of time in a popular content creator or pro player’s stream know the name Hideouts. In fact, watching a streamer report people blatantly cheating to Hideouts personally then sticking around to see the cheating teams get banned in real time has become its own form of Apex content. 

This ban wave is on a much larger scale, however, and seeks to specifically address players who are not necessarily downloading programs that hack into the game’s files on a player’s computer, but teaming with enemy squads to give themselves an unfair advantage in ranked lobbies. This includes the mobile respawn beacon exploit, where opposing teams craft as many respawn beacons as they can, before taking turns killing members of the other team, respawning those players, and killing them again, in order to farm as many kill points as possible.

Hideouts included the breakdown of platforms where players were banned, as well as ban length. PlayStation players won the prize for most players banned on the platform at 859, while 22 players were also banned for teaming in Apex on the Nintendo Switch, proving that there are truly cheaters everywhere. 

The bans will last for anywhere between one week and two months, depending on the extent of the players’ abuse of teaming. A week seems like a light punishment, given that the mobile respawn exploit that’s been so popular as of late usually depends on the mobile respawn beacon being in the game’s crafting rotation, which changes weekly to begin with. Hopefully, those who receive the most lenient punishment aren’t invested enough in the game to come back after the ban and continue doing the same thing. And, of course, there’s the fact that Apex Legends is free to play, and cheaters can always make new accounts when another account gets banned.

Still, hearing that there are a couple thousand fewer cheaters in the game is always a good feeling, and this is yet another chance to appreciate Hideouts’ immense work in maintaining the game’s integrity as best as anyone can.