While all games and platforms deal with cheaters and those players who try to find quick and easy ways to the top that skirt the rules, console players in Apex Legends have been sounding the alarm on people teaming and kill boosting for quite a while now.
After one of the top-ranked Predators on Xbox was caught teaming and kill boosting a little over a month ago, now it seems that PlayStation players want in on the act. Multiple high-ranked players playing on PS consoles were recently shown teaming with enemy squads and appeared to be farming kills as well.
The video clearly shows two different teams running side by side and seeming to coordinate against other three-man squads, in addition to huge kill numbers for the players shown. To many players on the subreddit, this seems like yet another clear case of top console players teaming and kill boosting.
The post is now locked since the subreddit doesn’t allow “calls to action” and suggests players should send in clips of cheaters to Respawn. But many console players don’t feel like that’s a viable option for them, considering how many reports and posts are made about console cheaters and how many of those players seem to hang around, seemingly avoiding bans.
Related: This Apex Legends player ban is a reminder to be very careful using the game’s text chat
“Teaming” in Apex most often refers to two separate teams getting into each other’s lobbies and avoiding fighting with each other, instead creating large six- or even nine-man squads that can easily roll over other teams in the lobby. Often, teamers also participate in kill boosting, which is the practice of two teams landing with each other and using respawn and mobile respawn beacons to kill multiple members of each other’s team before being revived and repeating the process. Kill boosting artificially inflates a player’s kills and damage, allowing them to easily skyrocket up the Predator leaderboards when paired with the high finishes that players can achieve through teaming.
It’s a problem that’s difficult to stop since the players in question aren’t using any scripts or cheats that alter the game in some way. And it’s made worse by the number of people who seem to be doing it on console, where it appears to be easier to pull off the trick of intentionally getting in someone else’s lobby. Typically, these players turn off crossplay to make their possible pool of players significantly smaller and make their odds of getting into the correct lobby much better.
It’s unclear if these players are still avoiding bans, but with so many high-level players on console who have been publicly shown to be skirting the game’s rules recently, it’s difficult for that player base to have faith in ranked’s competitive integrity.
