Apex Legends’ Season 20 may have breathed life into the shooter, but the cheating situation has become so bad that even former pros and content creators like Lulu are fed up with it and are pleading with Respawn this week to do something about it immediately.
In a tale as old as time, first-person shooters—especially those with competitive elements like Apex—have been a haven for cheaters. This is because cheating in these games has been proven to be easy, especially with AI software. In one of the many recent cheating fiascos, player-killing bots swarmed the maps, creating enormous problems across all ranks. After spending “five hours of dying to cheaters,” Lulu had enough and posted on X (formerly Twitter) on March 14 begging the devs to do something because Apex has become unbearable.
She’s not wrong, and she’s not alone. Other Apex players and pros have taken the cheater battle into their own hands by forming vigilante teams to take these cheaters out. While it might not do much to prevent them from playing Apex ever again, it might make the cheater think twice before hacking.
It’s not to say that the devs aren’t doing anything about it. The devs are working on the cheating situation, but there’s not much they can do besides slowly working through the complaints and reports and implementing ban waves. Even when people are banned, it’s usually only temporary and given the game is free-to-play, many just create a new account and go around for another lap.
But players feel like Respawn is active when it comes to “not-so-wholesome” names or griefing, issues that are disruptive but far from as bad as cheating is. While players once thought that Season 20 could have been great, the cheaters have made playing Apex next to impossible.
Unless Respawn rolls out some drastic ban waves or implements new anti-cheat strategies, we will continue to see cheaters in almost every match and a further dwindling player base.
