As any Apex Legends player, or pretty much anyone who has played an online game, knows, cheating is a big problem. Respawn isn’t immune to the problem, and the same can be said for so many other developers. But at least they’re taking a proactive stance and attacking the issue head-on.
We already heard about how the developer cracked down when the game first launched, banning tens of thousands of cheaters in total over the last few months. And with the launch of the new season of ranked play, another round of crackdowns and detection techniques is coming to Apex Legends. Community Manager Jay Frechette took to Reddit to details the plans the team has for tackling this issue, and it’s pretty cool to see.
The update lays out some pretty interesting policies that the developer plan to use to keep the shooter fair. The company will begin implementing more complex automated systems to detect and ban cheating, as well as helping filter incoming reports of cheaters for false positives. Respawn has also identified various risk factors that make it more likely that a reported cheater is actually cheating. Something like not have two-factor authentication enabled could be a sign that a reported account isn’t valued, and thus might be cheating. Going forward, Respawn will begin requiring TFA for some users in an attempt to discourage cheating. After all, if you’re cheating, you probably don’t want to hand over personal information.
Another cool twist is basically a “jail” server. The idea isn’t in the game yet, but it would be awesome to have. Jail servers are basically quarantine zones in online games where scammers and cheaters all get lumped together and forced to play only with each other. The idea is both and discouragement and a punishment, as the incentive to cheat to win disappears when everyone is doing it. It’s basically a bitter pill for the cheater to swallow as they realize how cheating has ruined the game experience and balance.
The post also goes into some details about other technical aspects of the game. There’s some talk about the server disconnects some players have experienced, offering a more technical view of the problem and how Respawn plans to mitigate the issue going forward.
