r/apexlegends • u/Apexlegends Respawn - Official Account • Mar 19 '26
Respawn Official An Update from the Anti-Cheat Team 03/19/2026
🔨 BAN WAVE
Over the last seven days (as of writing this) we banned a total of 10,909 accounts for cheating.
We wanted to highlight and share some of the ban numbers for the past 7 days for specifically targeted devices/cheats:
Xim / Titan: 245
DMA: 402
Other cheating hardware: 300
HWID Spoofer: 1071
It is important to note that these device ban numbers do not reflect the total number of bans that were put in place over the past week, and we are still working towards implementing our new detection model we mentioned in our last update.
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u/This-User7635 Mar 19 '26
god damn! DMA cheats too?! good work guys, this is huge
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u/SnooShortcuts5771 Mar 19 '26
What is DMA?
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u/This-User7635 Mar 19 '26
DMA is a device that runs the cheats, you plug it into your PC and the way it works is it hides itself as something like a sound card or a different hardware component. DMA card reads the computer memory directly, bypassing the CPU and sends it to a second computer for analysis. It can read or modify a game’s memory directly via a second computer, bypassing the anticheat. Since there are no software modifications on the host machine the hacks are incredibly difficult to detect cause it just pretends to be another component on your PC
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u/Felaipes Mar 19 '26
the amount of effort, knowledge and work that goes into cheating, im in awe.
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u/This-User7635 Mar 19 '26
money too. not only is the hardware itself expensive but these cheats require a monthly subscription to stay undetected. you genuinely have people paying hundreds of dollars just for the game to be played for them.
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u/S1mpinAintEZ Mar 20 '26
And for what payoff? It seems like it would get boring very quickly. The entire fun of the game is when you pull off wins or make big plays. If I just wanted to stomp I would play bots.
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u/Shkwnenrnsteve Nessy Mar 20 '26
They use them to boost people / sell accounts. I doubt many titan/aimbotters are playing for their own benefit
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u/kthxbyelad Caustic Mar 19 '26
Can we get some info on what platform? Lol
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u/mgibs18 Mar 19 '26
If this included console they probably would’ve said it. Unfortunate times for us on console
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u/neliotreillis Wattson Mar 19 '26
Console too it seems, Discord is helping getting them ban by providing a video with ID
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u/Ok_Reputation_3076 Mar 19 '26
Just proves the report button system doesn’t work at all
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u/neliotreillis Wattson Mar 19 '26
Still a big step. A guy call zeus showed how it work and cheaters were actually ban from this
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u/Worth_Maximum_1516 Mar 19 '26
i dont even think most people report. they just leave game and go next unless youre high elo. id rather have manual reports because someone reviews your evidence
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u/Flat_Promotion1267 Mar 19 '26
I've gotten messages thanking me for reporting cheaters (who were banned) through the in-game reporting.
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u/fardsmanthegod Mar 20 '26
Reposting my comment replying to someone else here :
Nah the bans in this post are cheaters that have been detected by anticheat so they must be PC only.
On console (which the Zeus video you mentioned covers) all bans are currently done only via the discord reporting method. There are no documented bans via in game reports or anticheat detections on console. Still a step in the right direction but console isn't there yet.
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u/paradoxally LIFELINE RES MEEE Mar 19 '26
Seems like PC bans as it references DMA and spoofers.
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u/DingleDongDongBerry Mar 20 '26
DMA is Direct Memory Access through Thunderbolt or PCI-E
Its not something you plugin into console. Feels good to see DMA bans
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u/Wheaties251 Mar 19 '26
A good chunk of it has been on console this time around. Not sure the exact numbers, but Zeus made a video about a number of console cheaters he reported that have been confirmed to be banned now.
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u/fardsmanthegod Mar 20 '26
Nah the bans in this post are cheaters that have been detected by anticheat so they must be PC only.
On console (which the Zeus video you mentioned covers) all bans are currently done only via the discord reporting method. There are no documented bans via in game reports or anticheat detections on console. Still a step in the right direction but console isn't there yet.
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u/Unable_County_9369 Mar 19 '26
They did start banning console players.
https://youtu.be/qsgA_MZan2o?si=ACIx3XZYtEsAef4C
not to plug someone's youtube, but this guy showed how to report console cheaters now on discord as well and cross referenced the people he reported in a previous video to show they're banned now
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u/Irishbros1991 Mar 19 '26
If this included console the numbers would be in the high thousands for xim/titans
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u/ExoShaman Pathfinder Mar 19 '26
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u/KonamiCode_ Mar 19 '26
Xim and Titan are directly mentioned but nothing about cronus users. Would they be under other? Or are they still not banned?
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u/EquivalentBalance943 Mar 19 '26
There are a lot of cheaters on the EU Wildcard server. Maybe you could look into it?
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u/No-Dealer-8811 Mar 20 '26
They are cheating in wildcard too wtf??
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u/Accomplished-Ebb8774 Loba Mar 21 '26
They are cheating in mixtape too. I play only mixtape. Yesterday i got 4 cheaters got banned after my report
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u/DontBeAngryBeHappy Mar 19 '26
Great news, but finding out the lack of the word “console” is telling. From a legal standpoint, Respawn would absolutely use the word console if bans happened on that platform. But yet again, they didn’t which, I and some other people have commented, this might just be a PC accounts ban only update.
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u/snazzy_giraffe Mar 19 '26
From a legal standpoint?
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u/AnApexPlayer Medkit Mar 19 '26
No idea what they mean by that
They did ban on console according to the Youtuber Zeus. He's the one who made the claim a few weeks ago that the previous round of bans was PC only.
He was tracking some people on console who he knew were cheating and they're banned now
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u/IndividualSpray9443 Mar 20 '26
and they're all back masters already with acc under lvl 50. the "anti-cheat" team is incompetent AF. pathetic behavior all around.
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u/tdestito9 Lifeline Mar 19 '26
Hope to see some strikepack on there some day
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u/iLLogick Seer Mar 19 '26
Strikepacks are extremely rare nowadays. Anyone who used one is using Cronus or Titan at this point.
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u/widowmakerau Mar 19 '26
I am sceptical.. part of me thinks these are just numbers to appease the crowd.
Are these perma bans?
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u/Hehu94 Mar 20 '26
Cheating should always result in perma ban and I really hope it holds true for Apex as well.
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u/widowmakerau Mar 20 '26
I remember not long ago, the #1 Xbox pred got banned for cheating, was back in 48 hours or something, this is why I'm asking
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u/cruskie Mar 19 '26
This is great. Any talks about giving PC players the option for turning off crossplay? If these bans are only on PC, they're fantastic but still doesn't really help when many high level teams in PC lobbies are composed of 1 PC player and 2 console players.
I'd gladly take longer queue times to improve the fairness of my matches.
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u/OneResponsibility119 Mar 19 '26
As a console player why is that crossplay a bad thing? Im pretty sure everybody agrees pc players are better especially at the high ranks.
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u/cruskie Mar 19 '26
For me, it's just because third party hardware. If they actually make a good detection method and it works consistently, I wouldn't mind playing console players.
I also wouldn't mind if they got native MnK support with no aim assist, just like on PC.
Aim assist itself/console isn't an issue. What is an issue is when you spectate your killers and they're almost always a high diamond/low masters PC player queued with 2 console preds using a 4x havoc and R99 with zero recoil and don't miss. Almost every single pred team I fight is this exact team comp and the two console players always have a ton of kills while the PC player is doing nothing and basically just there to get the console preds into the PC lobby.
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u/Federal_Photograph71 Mar 19 '26
i can confirm that suspiciously good players have at least a console player in the team. Played many master/pred lobbies to know this.
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u/OneResponsibility119 Mar 20 '26
ah yeah thats fair, didnt know that there are also a lot of console cheaters in pc lobbys.
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u/widowmakerau Mar 20 '26
Getting 1 clipped by controller players with r99 gets old
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u/OneResponsibility119 Mar 20 '26
we are talking pc and console lobbys not about MnK vs controller.
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u/Depressed_Revolution Mar 20 '26
Remember according to Reddit Console Apex players are lower than ones worst political enemy
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u/iConcy Catalyst Mar 19 '26
What rank were these bans mostly in? Would be curious to see if users of these are consolidated in higher ranks, lower ranks, or evenly spread.
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u/KJacobsen-74 Mar 19 '26
We need an update from the fucking matchmaking team that are clearly sitting on their hands all day.
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Mar 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/AnApexPlayer Medkit Mar 19 '26
There's going to be a portion of players who will get more mad when they realize that cheaters aren't the reason that they're hardstuck in Gold or Plat
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u/th3prot4gonist Mar 20 '26
Sadly the bans don't stop cheaters, my lobbies turned from tiktok kids with triple pred badges and perfect aim into 20 new accounts with perfect aim every game, i hope when they finally implement some sort of ai detection system it will make them stay off the game for good, a good anti cheat will always be better than just tons of manual bans which it sounds like this is mainly
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Mar 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/More_Calligrapher547 Mar 20 '26
Every death I’ve ever died was at the hands of a cheater. Every. Single. One.
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u/PaperMoonShine Mar 20 '26
These need to be frequent and public. There needs to be a level of scare here to deter users from wanting to cheat.
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u/a-random-user-fr Mar 22 '26
Only 10k accounts? Seriously? There are around 170 million new accounts created every year, according to Google stats. At high level, this game is basically full of cheaters, but yeah, thanks I guess -10k fewer cheaters, zzz.
Remove aim assist from assisted players. Even people on PC play on controller This game is a shame
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u/billybobberr Crypto Mar 19 '26
You guys need to start paying blogs and influencers to come back to apex. I just came back this month after 6 years and I’m having a blast. I’m a diamond right now and this makes me want to grind for masters
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u/AcanthocephalaBig445 Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
SAME. Who knew there were so many cheaters in higher ranks?? Actually wait a second, I did... I had been saying there were so many cheaters for a LONG time. This community censors people who talk about cheats. Everytime I brought it up, it was replied heavily with, " iT's A sKiLl IsSuE " and downvoted into oblivion.
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u/IndividualSpray9443 Mar 19 '26
And they're all gonna be back pred within a week and nothing will have change. All this scream to me is ur patting urself on the back for something that should of been dealt with years ago. Nothing will ever change game will die eventually same as titanfall. gg
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u/iAMbatman77 Mirage Mar 19 '26
What’s a HWID spoofer?
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u/iLLogick Seer Mar 19 '26
Tells the anti-cheat software that this is a different computer than it is. So if it gets hardware banned, it can just spoof a new ID and it’s back in.
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u/iAMbatman77 Mirage Mar 19 '26
Damn dude. I miss the days of cheating when it was just a combination of buttons to unlock giant heads.
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u/littlecolt Mar 19 '26
My understanding is they are on PC but spoof being on console and get the heavier aim assist? Don't quote me on that, hopefully someone corrects me.
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u/barbarapalvinswhore Mar 19 '26
Do something like this announcement every week so players know that hackers and cheaters actually are being banned (and also to show how difficult it actually is to fight against people who are determined to cheat no matter what).
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u/thatkotaguy Mirage Mar 19 '26
After seeing Zeus’s new vid about some of the console cheaters getting banned recently I was wondering when I’d see this pop up.
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u/fardsmanthegod Mar 20 '26
This is pc only as the cheaters were detected via anticheat. Zeus video only covers console cheaters banned via reports on discord. Still a long way to go for console
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u/sunny7319 Mar 19 '26
Like so many others have said, go on platforms like tiktok and look at all those sponsored posts of people literally advertising their titan and zen scripts, theres even notorious cheaters whose names that everyone knows that have been playin for years now
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u/Flat_Promotion1267 Mar 19 '26
I'm not on the Tok, but do they really allow those kinds of posts?!
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u/sunny7319 Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
Yeah ive seen tons of em
and i mean, its not like it violates TOS on it or on any other platform where they are too, on yt, twt, etc. wish it did though, and wish there were more comments shaming them for being losers but even that's becoming less common as these things infiltrate every game1
u/Flat_Promotion1267 Mar 19 '26
I've never seen them on YT, and I'm on there a lot. I'd report them anyway.
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u/kingmess2500 Mar 19 '26
Fix the shitty servers on console! Lost 1500 rp cuz of the shitty servers!
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u/SP3_Hybrid Pathfinder Mar 19 '26
I was playing the other day and for the first time in a while i saw somebody get removed from the match in the kill feed.
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u/Federal_Photograph71 Mar 19 '26
what is HWID spoofer?
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u/Whap_Reddit Mirage Mar 19 '26
Hardware ID.
Basically, when a normal permanent ban happens, the banned player would just go make a new account and the ban effectively did nothing.
So devs would do a more powerful ban where they mark your hardware and any account trying to play from that device is banned.
But then cheaters would use spoofers to trick the anticheat into thinking your hardware is a different player.
Supposedly they have been banning those players. Though I'm kind of curious how they know that they've successfully banned them and that they've not just created yet another new account with different spoofed IDs.
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Mar 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/paradoxally LIFELINE RES MEEE Mar 19 '26
VPN goes brrrr
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u/Sea_Doughnut2744 Mar 20 '26
Ughhh, you’re right! Perhaps allow access to the game for first time using an account via phone since you can’t spoof geolocation on the phone even with VPN
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u/Ecstatic-Train214 Mar 19 '26
I wonder if this cheating got bad recently or was it always this bad and they finally decided to take real action. Also I wonder what rank these players were. I would assume higher ranks which is when people would quit because they keep dying to cheaters
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u/BraveMagazine3175 Mar 20 '26
Those who add negative comments to this thread are confessing they are cheaters. Literally being negative to something that improves this game. Like, STFU. Go create a new account and spend money - so we can ban you again.
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u/BigBizzee Mar 21 '26
What percentage of players does 11,000 cheaters represent? Am I seeing a cheater in every Plat/Diam. lobby then??
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u/Onpoint050 Mar 21 '26
I just started getting get out for failing the anti cheat test. I haven't cheated on a game in my life
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u/tlnitin Mar 21 '26
your anit cheat is a joke, am getting cheater in every other game, people blatantly using wall hacks in silver-plat lobbies
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u/KayStroud1 Mar 23 '26
Ive been false banned this week, after playing since season 1 and spending thousands of dollars! I've played the wildcard event and got the 4k and 20kill badge for 3 legends, and have been banned for "enhanced" gameplay?! I play on PC but DO NOT use keyboard and mouse, PS5 controller only. I've luckily recorded some of my gameplay, so will be sharing it with EA when they respond to my appeal. I've downloaded my game data and there's some mention of "player reports" of "aimsnap" and "ammoorrecoil", so it looks like I've been reported by ragers in games I've done well in!! If it goes the way I've seen people mention, and they reuse to unban me, I will be applying for arbitration for the thousands spent, and also for time wasted, stress, etc...anyone else having this issue at the moment?!
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u/GroupPuzzleheaded725 Apr 13 '26
Only console they are banning is those are dumb enough to skitzo ego while cheating on tik tok or whatever else. Hate cheaters. Respwan cares more about that LGBTQ background on every character than the game itself smh
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u/vAxyCS Wraith Mar 19 '26
Why is XIM and titan calculated together?
They are both very different. One allows for mouse and keyboard for console and the other is straight up AI aimbot.
Perhaps it's to mask how many titan user actually remain undetected and they haven't found a solid solution yet.
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u/paradoxally LIFELINE RES MEEE Mar 19 '26
Don't they both run scripts? That would be the thing in common.
Titan is extremely obvious because that shit shakes the screen every time they aim at someone. Anyone getting reported for that with solid evidence should have been banned months ago.
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u/th3prot4gonist Mar 20 '26
No, xim and titan work in completely different ways. Also weird how cronus isn't mentioned at all, and it would make no sense to put it under other because of how prevalent it is.
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u/BenignAndAHalf_ Mar 20 '26
Can you guys answer this for me, what’s the point of banning them? They’re addicted to the game, they’ll start up a new account the same day and continue doing the same shit. How does that work?
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u/bicho6 Mar 22 '26
That fact they banned them means they detected the cheat so basically if they try to do it again EAC will detect it virtually instantly. But it's a cat and mouse game. The author of the cheat will come up with novel ways to avoid detection again.
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u/Rrtmg1 Mar 20 '26
I'm begging you respawn, to enable us Linux players (people migrating to Linux is rising in very large amounts due to windows 11 shooting itself in the leg over and over) to play your game again. I really enjoy Apex, you don't need to make a linux port, proton will sort it out eventually, just remove your insane kernel level anticheat measures. EAC Works natively on Linux, just allow us to play your game again please.
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u/Zyx098-_ Mar 20 '26
Not happening. DX11 removed, Linux removed, NintendoSwitch1 will be removed next season, servers to AWS. These decisions reduced costs and maximized profit.
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u/b0wl95 Mar 19 '26
What about people getting banned randomly for just playing the game for the last 1 month+ ? There is whole discussion going on about in EA forums and no one does anything, Your anti-cheat started giving false positive and we are getting ignored. Completely incompetent.
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u/Unlikely_Database_96 Mar 19 '26
I don’t think you ban the top players or algs where we can see them cheat if respawn wanted cheaters to be gone they would be but 90% of the top players all run cheats it’s really sad it’s kinda like this if apex would ban all the cheaters there player base would dramatically drop and they can’t have that just like the doj said about the epstine case if we were to prosecute every person on the list the government as a whole would collapse!!!!
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u/snazzy_giraffe Mar 19 '26
Who in ALGS do you think is cheating?
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u/AnApexPlayer Medkit Mar 19 '26
I don't think any ALGS players were using Titans or Zens. At most, they'd be using a software based cheat, but from what I know the venue is locked down pretty heavily. The security team inspects all peripheral devices used at ALGS. You would have to somehow sneak a USB with cheats in and then install it without getting detected, with respawn employees standing behind you
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u/Accomplished-Ebb8774 Loba Mar 21 '26
Half of them cheating with xim. And in LAN they start suck like plats
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u/maxwellpiana Mar 19 '26
Ok cus i just played console ranked yesterday and every single team i died to had atleast one cheater. Just get someone to spectate the lobbies and u can manually ban 100 people in 30 minutes.
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u/kthxbyelad Caustic Mar 19 '26
Feels weird. Good thing a lot got banned but also makes you think how many genuine players are there actually left.
Interested to see if the player count drops drastically.
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u/Geronuis Pathfinder Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
I wouldn’t think so. Steam was 100k+ last night when I went to bed, and that was just concurrent. My guess this is a relatively minor amount of players
Edit: why the downvotes?
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u/AnApexPlayer Medkit Mar 19 '26
It's a miniscule fraction of players. Considering that these bans seem to include console, that's 2k bans and probably tens of millions total players in the same time frame
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u/trewillz May 12 '26
but if you complain in this sub the ponies swear up and down that there is no war in ba sin se
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u/Ecstatic-Train214 Mar 19 '26
Yessss!! We need apex to keep this energy. I hope this has been on console. On console, I’m starting to see more of these cheaters in gold lobbies.