PC players report issue with antivirus software detecting malware in Apex Legends’ files

Apex Legends PC players are complaining about an issue with Avast Antivirus that’s preventing the battle royale from launching.

One player aired out their frustrations in a Reddit post today, explaining that the antivirus program is detecting the executable file “r5apex.exe” as malicious after yesterday’s update.

The player assumes that the detection is a “false positive” and that the file is being incorrectly read as malicious, but they don’t know how to fix the issue.

Other players echoed similar sentiments, encountering the same issue after yesterday’s mysterious 700-megabyte update.

“My avast removed the r5apex.exe and the game wasn’t launching,” one player said. “The funny thing is that I couldn’t pinpoint the problem, I didn’t see that was the new updates’ fault.”

Respawn hasn’t acknowledged the issue, but fans who want to get back into Kings Canyon may need to try uninstalling Avast and redownloading the patch—at your own risk, of course.

Assuming Respawn hasn’t shipped out a virus to thousands of people’s computers, the issue will likely be fixed in the next update.