Respawn takes swift action against hackers targeting ImperialHal, other pros’ Apex accounts

In the latest high-profile hacking incident to strike Apex Legends, pro players and streamers ImperialHal, Sweet, and Rogue had their EA accounts compromised on Jan. 16, with hackers using their accounts to play ranked. Today, Respawn Entertainment announced it was taking action.

In response to the security breach, Respawn said the accounts of the three players were “temporarily banned” while the dev team investigated how hackers got access to them. But the developer has now rolled out a security update to the game, and the affected accounts have been restored. The post came one day after Rogue pleaded for help from the Apex team on X/Twitter, and while the situation seemed to be resolved quickly, the hackers’ actions and subsequent bans to the accounts seemed to spoil the race for rank one in the game.

Cheating and hacking is nothing new to Apex, and this isn’t the first time high-profile players have had their accounts compromised in recent memory. During an online ALGS regional final last year, ImperialHal and then-teammate Genburten had their accounts broken into while they streamed their points of view, the hacker giving them aimbot and wallhacks. The pair quickly realized what was happening and alerted ALGS officials, while the hacker in question began displaying his name on their screens.

That time, the hacker in question seemed somewhat benevolent, as he intentionally waited for the trio to be in an ALGS event and left a clear trail to show the pros were not themselves knowingly cheating. The latest instance of pros having their accounts hacked hasn’t been so nice.

This group of hackers simply grabbed pro accounts wholesale, including names, ranks, and skins, and began playing in ranked lobbies impersonating the pro players, using various cheats as they did and ruining games for everyone else in their lobbies. Their actions also got the pros’ accounts banned and subsequently spoiled the race for the No. 1 spot on the leaderboards for several players, including those accounts they had stolen.

“Not even sure how to sum up the situation on cheaters, how they’ve affected my life on trying to stream the game as entertainment for everyone & how unfair the situation has been on streamers security,” Rogue said on X earlier today, before detailing how he’s had his real-life address revealed to entire lobbies in addition to countless games ruined over the past month and a half. “The hackers brag about being able to do this to anyone, just for fun.”

While it seems this latest security breach has been cleared up, the incident is yet another blow to a game in the midst of some historically poor player-count numbers for itself. While this incident only affected a few people, they’re some of the most high-profile players in the game, and the cheating issue doesn’t seem to be going away quickly.

Season 23 of Apex still has another three weeks before it wraps up on Feb. 11. Hopefully for players, there’s better times ahead for the title in future seasons.