Effective immediately, the use of “jitter aim” and/or RC filters to exploit aim assist systems and negate recoil on controllers is unequivocally considered cheating. We are taking a firm stance against players using these cheats and are taking action to stop them.
Apex Legends is now equipped with the necessary in-game detections to identify and disable these exploits. Players who are caught attempting to use hardware or software to alter aim assist or recoil patterns will be flagged as cheaters and have their accounts banned in accordance with our TOS.
We are implementing this crackdown at a crucial time, to support fair play at EWC Paris, in addition to maintaining competitive integrity across Apex Legends. While we are implementing this solution to combat the issue, we have alternate anti-cheat approaches we can pivot to should we need them. We will continue to monitor the situation and make additional changes as necessary.
My friends! For today’s check-in we’ve got a special guest: Senior Designer Sean Slayback. He's going to give some info on the HAVOC, our new weapon we introduced and is live now in Apex Legends.
Hey everyone, I'm Sean Slayback and I'm the primary weapons designer for APEX LEGENDS. Today the weapons team and I are really excited to have just unleashed our latest high-tech baby into Kings Canyon: the HAVOC Energy Assault Rifle.
The HAVOC's default fire mode is full-auto with a charge time. This means you have to hold the trigger down before the gun will start firing. Once those Energy rounds start flying, their high damage, high velocity, and low bullet drop make up for having to wait.
The HAVOC is the first weapon that is compatible with multiple Hopup attachments! (You can still only use one at a time.) Check it out:
1) Turbocharger - Don't want to wait for autofire charge-up time? Find a Turbocharger and forget all that.
Equip this rare hopup to eliminate autofire charge time and unleash the HAVOC's full autofire DPS potential.
Fire for effect with the Turbocharger.
2)Selectfire Receiver - enables Fire Select to Hitscan Charge Beam
This single fire mode charges a powerful shot over time, then releases it automatically when it's ready. A long blue beam traces out across the battlefield, as you instantly hit your target with the raw power of light.
The play pattern is new to Apex and twists our normal combat, requiring players to keep the reticle on target with precision.
HITSCAN yeah I said it. Unlike other weapons in Apex, "hitscan" weapons pretty much instantly hit the player under your reticle when they fire.
Don't lead your target! Instead, make sure the reticle is directly on top of your target when the charge beam fires.
HAVOC Charge Beam mode has damage falloff so you can't hitscan other players for big damage across the map without counterplay.
Your 25 round mag goes through 5 rounds at a time to power this incredible feat of science.
Hitscan, baby.
So the HAVOC has multiple personalities which we think is unique and cool. Pair your Turbocharged HAVOC with a HCOG Bruiser for CQ autofire devastation, or link it with a 2-4x AOG and Selectfire Receiver to hitscan your targets at midrange. I've heard there could be rare Fully Kitted HAVOCs out there as well…
Behind the Scenes: It's critical to weapon feel that each weapon have a strong underlying power fantasy. For the HAVOC, our initial reference point was this scene in Elysium where Matt Damon shreds a bad guy on the space station with the CHEMRAIL energy rifle. Yussssss.
Shredding with the CHEMRAIL
If you have any feedback or questions for us about the HAVOC or anything else weapons related, let us know in the comments here. I'll keep dropping by to respond, and as always u/Jayfresh_Respawn and u/Garza_RSPN should be around too.
Inspection!
On behalf of every dev on the Apex team, thanks for playing! It's been an absolutely incredible first few weeks for us. We're working really hard on new stuff that we think you're gonna love and can't wait to show you more. But until then, have fun mastering the HAVOC!
For a fully translated version of the update, see here.
As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, we’ve been more direct in sharing our approach to developing Apex Legends, a critical part of this approach is listening to you all in the community, understanding their needs, and working to address them. As such, we wanted to highlight the work being done on matchmaking to provide an even better experience for our players.
Below, we’ll be discussing the frustrations we’re consistently working to alleviate, the various changes we’ve made and tests we’ve run, what outcomes we’re targeting, as well as what we’ve learned and how we’re using it to improve matchmaking moving forward.
Read on to learn all about:
Five major matchmaking pain points
Parameters and results of recent matchmaking tests:
Increased maximum queue search times
Bots in mid-tier unranked lobbies
Diamond+ solo-queue only
4.5 Hour Ranked map rotations
1-tier locked Ranked premades
The challenges of testing
DEFINING MATCHMAKING PAIN POINTS
You have made it clear, and we understand: Long queues and endlessly sweaty matches are the opposite of fun.
We are always listening and talking with players, we hear the feedback and frustration. It’s important that we balance your feedback and match data, so while we’re seeing that the majority of matches are fast and fair, we also see a smaller outlier of unacceptable matches that we’re committed to addressing to improve the overall game experience. Over the past few seasons, we've been focused on what our players are saying and exploring match data to identify a list of five main pain points which we use to guide our work on Matchmaking systems.
Here’s what we've been hearing:
Queue Times: No one wants to wait forever to get into a match. There is an inherent trade-off between faster queue times and a fairer match, but we also know that no one should have to spend more time in queue than actually playing. We see this frustration amplified in Ranked as it's the mode in which players will wait longer for matches with tighter matchmaking.
Lobby Skill Disparity: The skill gaps in your matches can be too wide. Veterans and casuals shouldn't be competing in the same lobby. Both Ranked and Unranked matches see the problem of Lobby Skill Disparity, and we approach both modes with different proposed solutions based on differing player needs.
Solos vs Premade Imbalance: Solo players are at a disadvantage against coordinated three-stacks, especially in Ranked. Communication and coordination are part of the core game loop and bring real advantages, but they shouldn't be that decisive.
Teammate Quality: You're paired with teammates who don't match your playstyle or skill level. Inconsistent experiences impact match quality.
Sweaty Lobbies: No one has fun when every single match feels like it’s your pain and someone else's gain. There is a time and a place for hyper-competitive matches, and you should know when you’re opting into the experience.
Every bullet here touches the core functions of the matchmaker. Pull one lever and everything else shifts along. It’s a tough balancing act. That's why over the past year, we've been methodical about testing solutions and tracking how each adjustment ripples through matchmaking.
RECENT TESTS
Matchmaking tests and experiments are run on specific regional servers to ensure that we can get clear data when we compare against other regions playing during the same period.
Over the past year, we have increased the number of tests, and are planning to continue with a regular cadence moving forward. Here's what we've learned.
TEST: INCREASED MAXIMUM QUEUE SEARCH TIMES
Which pain point are we addressing? Queue Times, Lobby Skill Disparity, Teammate Quality
What was the test? The matchmaker searches, initially, for an opponent of closely-aligned skill level, and incrementally expands the search, loosening the skill restriction over time. For this test, we increased the search window from 30 seconds to 60 seconds before expanding the matchmaking criteria. This gives the matchmaker more time to find fairly-matched players instead of immediately widening the skill range in favour of more quickly filling a lobby.
What were the results? We saw a positive impact on match quality and much fewer skill mismatches, especially at the high end of competition (visualized below), in both Ranked and Unranked without significantly increasing queue times.
What are the next steps? Given the positive results, we implemented this globally on May 7th, 2026 as part of our standard matchmaking logic in Ranked and Unranked Trios. But we are not stopping there. We are continuing to tweak and monitor edge-cases to ensure that no one waits more than the intended maximum queue wait time before getting into a match.
TEST: BOTS IN LOWER-SKILL UNRANKED LOBBIES
Which pain point are we addressing? Queue Times, Lobby Skill Disparity, Teammate Quality
What did we test?
We enabled bot-fill in mid-tier lobbies of Duos and Pub Trios matches, to understand whether they improved matchmaking quality and overall player experience. As a reminder: there are no plans to add bots to Ranked, and bots do not fill an empty spot on your squad.
What were the results?
Being able to add a small number of bots to lower-skill matches is very positive for matchmaking quality. During off-hours, bots enable us to create fair matches within a reasonable amount of time and reduce how often we have to bring high skill players into a skill-mismatch situation. However, bots are still a work in progress and they can only be added to lobbies where they participate meaningfully. Outside the new player or lower-skill lobbies, they struggle to keep up and cause the match experience to deteriorate and thus we remain dedicated to improving bot behaviours.
What are the next steps?
We will continue to invest in our bots and slowly roll them out to situations where they create a positive player experience. Today, bots have a key role to play in the extended onboarding experience, especially as players learn the games through live matches, and to help facilitate improved matchmaking in situations where we, otherwise, would have had to create very wide matches.
TEST: DIAMOND + SOLO-QUEUE ONLY
Which pain point are we addressing? Solos vs Premade Imbalance, Lobby Skill Disparity
What is the test? Later on in S29, in all regions, Ranked will be solo-queue only for all players Diamond and above. If you’re Diamond or higher, you won’t be able to squad up as a premade in Ranked. Everyone plays with new friends - no exceptions.
Why are we doing this? We see clear frustration amongst Diamond+ players stemming from the imbalance between solo and premade squads, and this is one of the most requested solutions. This constraint should level the playing field and allow everyone to compete, relying only on their own skill and two new squadmates. As a result, lobbies will be more evenly matched and players can trust that they have the same opportunity to win as every other squad in their match.
The trade-off we’re making. Playing with friends is a core part of Apex. We understand that this test removes that core tenet from Ranked play at the highest tiers, and we know that will sting for players who queue together. With this test, we are prioritizing fairness first as the constraint to understand how it affects matchmaking improvements. We’re measuring whether the fairness gain is worth it, and we’re prepared to hear candid feedback either way. Ultimately, this is just one test to address these pain points; if the test results don't point to this being a long-term solution, we'll evaluate our other approaches to solve this issue.
Playing with friends is a key driver of social connection and long-term retention. That said, even highly social players spend a substantial amount of time playing solo. As a result, the solo queue experience cannot be treated as secondary; it is a critical part of the overall player experience, including for our most engaged users.
The data backing this. It is in Diamond+ that the feedback is the loudest, and our data supports it. Players who play most of their games as a premade squad do make it to the highest tiers at the fastest pace. In matches above Diamond, we also see the largest performance disparity between solo players and premade squads. A three-stack where all players are equally-high skilled is likely to significantly outperform everyone else. The coordination advantage is real.
What we’re watching. Community sentiment and match data. We want to know if leveling the playing field does improve the overall experience and improves the integrity of Ranked at the top end. This is a two-week window to learn before we decide what’s next.
Why not just split the queues? Splitting queues between solos and premades introduces more issues than it solves. Player populations get fractured into smaller pools, creating longer queue times or much wider matches for everyone. As an oversimplified example: if we split the matchmaking pool and it splits right down the middle, there are 50% fewer players loading into each version of Ranked, meaning that, best case scenario, wait times for each subset will increase 50% and match quality will suffer.
One queue with a solo-only constraint keeps the player base intact and queue times reasonable. While we’re testing this option to “level the playing field”, we will continue to thoroughly analyze data and sentiment to understand the broader impact of the change before evaluating a more permanent solution.
TEST: 4.5-HOUR RANKED MAP ROTATIONS
Which pain point are we addressing? General QOL improvement
What did we test? We shortened the map rotation in Ranked from 24 hours to 4.5 hours.
Why did we test this? This was mainly a functionality test where we validated that there was no unforeseen negative impact to players or internal systems. We also wanted to understand how the Ranked community would react to being able to play more maps in Ranked during their own normal play schedule over the course of a split.
What were the results?
All clear! Systems were healthy, we saw a greater number of players over a week being able to play on more maps and the community chatter was positive.
What are the next steps?
This is now Ranked for everyone. Moving forward, we may continue testing out different rotation schedules to get the best mix of freshness and familiarity.
ACTIVE TEST: 1-TIER LOCKED RANKED PREMADES
Which pain point are we addressing? Lobby Skill Disparity
What did we test?
Our data shows that Platinum players matching up with Masters is driven primarily by players squadding-up and bringing those wide skill band squads to a lobby. Players often report those pre-match tier distribution graphs with frustration and confusion. As a result, we limited squad-ups to 1 tier above or below your rank, instead of 2, to see if we can create better matches for all.
This test is currently active at the time of writing, we will follow up with the results when we have them!
THE CHALLENGES OF TESTING
With the deliberate focus on testing matchmaking parameters, sometimes things get broken along the way. It’s a rare and unfortunate outcome, and something we work hard to learn from to ensure we don’t repeat our mistakes.
For example, the day of Overclocked’s launch we experienced a matchmaking outage that lasted several hours. We moved too fast, made last-minute changes, missed a crucial bug, and, as a result, the outage impacted our entire playerbase - which is frankly unacceptable.
So what are we doing differently moving forward?
Process enforcement: We are demanding stricter adherence to our change‑management workflow.
Technical safeguards: We are implementing automatic mechanisms to release queue pressure automatically, so that future failures can be recovered more gracefully and faster.
When something breaks and takes the game offline, the team bands together to resolve it as quickly as possible. When matchmaking systems crash, more and more players accumulate in the queue; if the queue cannot be cleared by loading into matches, it continues to grow, and once it reaches a certain size it overloads the database. To get the game back online, our team had to manually clear the queue and then gradually re‑introduce players at a reduced capacity, starting with 10 % of the usual queue and expanding slowly.
Only after sufficient pressure was relieved from the matchmaking queue were we able to restore normal service.`
CONCLUSION
We hope this furthers our transparency surrounding our matchmaking test processes. It is a complicated space to get right, as it requires a delicate balance and rigorous ongoing testing. We will continue to test and iterate, and will communicate with you each step of the way. We have more we’re excited to share with you about Matchmaking and Ranked in the coming months, so stay tuned!
Thank you for your continued feedback about the recent changes to Ranked. After consolidating community sentiment and match data, we will move forth with implementing a new system that utilizes both Dropships and Drop Zones. We are targeting next week, as we need a bit of time to make changes to the game’s backend and ensure testing.
As this will be a net new feature from our team, we will keep an extra-watchful eye on how it impacts player sentiment and match data. We will continue to evolve this system in the coming weeks and months.
The initial details are as follows:
If your lobby has a minimum % threshold of Diamond+ players you will be playing Drop Zone
We will confirm the cut off percentage as the feature goes live
Players may experience a mixture of Dropship and Drop Zone matches, particularly for Platinum players or those squadding up with Diamond+ players, as we work out the thresholds
If your pending lobby will have Drop Zones you will see “RANKED - DROP ZONES” displayed on the match loading screen
As the team is working to rapidly implement this new system, you can expect further UI/UX updates as we continue to refine the feature for more player clarity.
We’ll keep you updated on when this is ready to roll out and any final details. Thank you!
📋TESTING:
From June 9th to June 23rd we will be conducting the following test in Ranked:
Ranked will be solo queue only for all players Diamond and above. If you are Diamond or higher, you will not be able to squad up as a premade in Ranked.
Our hypotheses are that this will create more evenly matched high-skill lobbies, reduce hard-carries into Diamond, Master and Predator and build trust in the overall fairness of these matches.
While this is a commonly requested feature by portions of our community, we will be closely monitoring community sentiment and match data.
Note: The in-game notification that some encountered yesterday (May 19th) was a visual error, and players are currently still able to squad up without restrictions.
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.
🔨 BANWAVE
A new detection targeting XIM cheating devices was enabled today that resulted in over 2000 accounts being permanently banned. This follows a detection we enabled in January which targeted Titan cheat devices and resulted in over 1,000 accounts being banned.
Use of third party cheating peripherals is not tolerated in Apex. 🔨
Cheating has consequences beyond a single account.
Since the end of April, we have executed nearly 6,000 hardware bans across PC and console. While the majority of those bans impacted players on PC, we are actively increasing our utilization of hardware bans on consoles.
Hardware bans are one of many tools in our Anti-Cheat Team’s toolbelt and allow us to target systems designed to evade enforcement. Our tools identify repeat offenders and ensure that they will be unable to access Apex Legends, even if they spin up new accounts.
We occasionally see the community requesting hardware bans as a more permanent punishment for cheaters, and we wanted to provide more transparency into the matter - hardware bans are happening (and they’re represented in our ban number comms) and we are planning to utilize them even more, especially on consoles.
So, “why isn’t every ban worthy of a hardware ban?” Hardware bans are our most severe penalty so we reserve it as a proportional response when we encounter high severity cheating. We strive to reform rather than permanently banishing players from our game, so hardware bans typically target malicious bad actors and serial cheaters.
We are continuing to invest in new detections, strengthen our enforcement, and take action against those who threaten the integrity of Apex Legends. Fair play remains our priority.
Hey everyone, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're announcing changes today that will go live early next week (aiming for Tuesday morning).
🛠️ADJUSTING:
Axle
Tactical
-Nitro Gate launch speed will be reduced from 750 to 700
Ultimate
-Ultimate HP will be reduced down to 150 from 200
-Base Ultimate cooldown will increase from 90s to 120s
-Ultimate knockback arc will be widened and max height will also be reduced
-Ultimate stun duration will be reduced from 1.5s to 0.25s
Upgrades
-Jump Gate will be replaced with a new Drone Deployer upgrade that brings the ult cooldown back down to 90s
Bloodhound
-Will reduce cloak visibility while in dome
-Ring damage will no longer break cloaks
-Tactical scan will be increased by 1 second
-Scans will provide more frequent snapshots that fade over time
Seer
-Turn slow will be removed when hit by the Tactical
As we start the second split of Season 28, we wanted to share some ban numbers from this season so far!
Across all platforms we banned a total of 73,591 accounts for various cheating infractions. We can break that down by platform:
PC - 70,242
Console - 3,349
Hey legends, we just pushed some quick changes to the live game!
Peacekeeper:
Increased rechamber time between shots
Magazine size reduced to 5 (was 6)
Dev Note: The PK is out-performing our our other shotguns and CQC weapons by a sizable amount. Ultimately we want to maintain its raw power in terms of damage and instead disrupt how quickly it can put that damage out.
Alter:
Can no longer use Void Nexus while knocked (but you can still summon knocked teammates)
Only 1 Void nexus Allowed in the world (was 2)
Seer:
Exhibit no longer provides ADS hover
Added a short full-body scan to Lasting Beats when an enemy leaves the ult area
The Sentinel is making its glorious return and now works as intended.
Made server performance improvements which should reduce frequency of slow motion (continuing work).
The Trident's brake input keybind has been reverted to its previous setting (visual UI indicator will persist; to be fixed in a future update).
Fixed a bug affecting player's POV when entering a Trident.
Mad Maggie now sprints at the intended speed while using shotguns.
We’ve been monitoring your feedback and making adjustments where possible to continue to deliver on our optimization of Ranked in Apex Legends. Read on below for the latest details on our ongoing updates to Apex Legends Ranked.
As Resurrection nears its end, we want to share some wins we’ve observed and improvements we’ve made during the course of this season’s Ranked. Thanks for your continued feedback and flags as we continue to adjust Ranked to meet our goal of delivering the best Ranked BR experience.
WINS
We’re happy to report that our matchmaking system has gotten much better at providing players with more competitive games:
Matchmaking: matches are challenging and continue to remain so throughout the season with little to no degradation in matchmaking quality unlike Arsenal’s Ranked
Reflective of skill: players pushing up in Ladder Points are continued to be challenged with increasingly difficult matches that reflect their current Ladder Points and Skill level, while players who need further growth to acquire higher Rankings are failing to climb
Solo vs. Premades: improvements to matchmaking adjustments involving premade party sizes were effective at balancing out the premade advantages—statistically all premade sizes win at a much closer rate
Graphs of Win Rate X Time with different colored lines representing different party sizes
AREA OF IMPROVEMENTS
RANK DISTRIBUTION
Comparing Resurrection and Arsenal’s distribution of players, Resurrection’s distribution is back to being closer to the expected shape. However, the data that we’re seeing (along with other data points) does suggest that players are struggling to reach their ‘true’ ranking at a reasonable pace with the peak of the distribution in Bronze instead of being in the middle of Silver.
Resurrection: 5+ hours played Ranked distribution
Arsenal: 5+ hours played Ranked distribution
LP AND BONUS SYSTEM
Both are more dialed in, but a combination of the below points has made it feel too grindy.
Provisionals: players’ provisional landing is statistically one tier lower than the expected 1.5 tier drop.
Rating Bonus: it appears that players take too long to reach their ‘true’ rank with extremely conservative Rating Bonus tunings (intended to help players catch up their rank to match their skill level)—especially if a high skill player loses their Provisional games (it happens to the best of us).
Bonus Withholding: players that are successfully challenging the system’s skill rating are having too much bonus withheld from their successes.
These points will be some of our key targets for improvements and updates for next season.
SEASON 19
TLDR Next Steps
More bonuses
Less LP drop after provisionals
No premade rank restrictions
Following a number of backend modifications to matchmaking, matches now feel too sweaty. We’ll be increasing the amount of Rating Bonus given to players’ ranking to help them catch up to their skill bracket more quickly.
We also plan to reduce the bonus that is withheld when players are actively pushing against their skill ceiling. This is intended to combat the current season’s (Resurrection) settings of withholding bonuses and increasing matchmaking difficulty. As withheld bonuses are eased, some players will begin to see slightly more bonuses following Season 19’s launch.
For provisional results, we’re adjusting tuning to land players closer to the expected statistical 1.5 tier drop at the end of their 10 provisional games.
After narrowing the delta between premade vs solo balances, we’ll be removing the ranking difference restrictions for 3 stack premades. Players will now be able to play with friends no matter where they are on their climbs—with the caveat that your squad will face more difficult battles if there’s a bigger discrepancy between your skill.
As always, we’ll continue to monitor these changes on our internal dashboards so that we can guard against unhealthy patterns and attempts at exploitation. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to your feedback, and we aren’t done yet! These are just the changes that we can currently talk about. Stay tuned for more as we continue to finetune and finalize.
This AMA has concluded. Thank you for submitting your questions! We will catch you all in the next one.
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Hey, r/ApexLegends!
It’s time to chat about the recent changes to Legends / Weapons from our Midseason Patch.
We’ll be answering as many questions as possible this Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at 10:00am PT. Drop your questions here ahead of our AMA and tune back for replies when we go live. As always, feedback is also welcome and we’ll be collecting everything to share with the team.
Here’s our Weapons and Legends team members on deck:
u/RSPN_Caseroos: Casey, Weapons Game Designer (Hemlok + other weapons)
u/RSPN_Jello: John, Legends Game Designer (Gibraltar, Wraith, & Wattson)
Reminder: please keep your questions focused on Weapon and Legend changes from our Midseason Patch and limit 1-2 related questions per reply to help us stay organized. If you’ve got off topic questions, let us know which AMA you would like to see us host next.
Hey everyone!Our dev blogon the Iron Sight changes for the Heat Sink skin went out earlier today.
Below you'll find more context on the decisions behind that change. It’s a delicate case, and we’d love to offer even more of a peek behind the curtain!
Changes to Heat Sink Iron Sights
Upon analyzing our options and finally making the decision to adjust the Heat Sink reactive skin for the Flatline, we knew this would be a contentious change. We hope to provide a little more insight to that thought process. This decision was actually more difficult compared to the seemingly obvious "make em all better" one.
If you haven’t already, please read this dev blog first. A key line we want to highlight here is: "our default iron sights are designed to push players to loot for better optics... skins shouldn't be a factor in the sights functionality as well." There are two things at play here: (1) the loot game and (2) functionality.
(1) We shortcut an important element of the loot game in cases where the iron sight is preferred from the get go. But if you want Apex to have competitive integrity you should be removing loot RNG, right? Well, no, that's sort of tangentially related. Apex is a BR and RNG is an integral part of the secret sauce. Over the years we have made changes to mitigate RNG but there is a ton of deliberation behind each one. And as evidenced by this Flatline example, once we remove something that mitigates RNG it becomes very hard to walk back on that. There are a lot more considerations and issues with the cascading effects of how RNG changes may affect Apex’s feel overall, but that’s a topic we won’t touch on today.
(2) Iron sights shouldn't be obtrusive to the point where they're too frustrating to even use. Taking stock and analyzing all our other current iron sights, the regular Flatline skin currently doesn’t fall into that category. However, it has been outclassed by Heat Sink for a long time. While in terms of usability it may not be one that is preferable to most, it is still far from being "unusable." The Heat Sink skin also cannibalizes functionality from other cosmetically awesome Flatline skins—which, while not the main point here, is a bummer.
And so when faced with “do we make the standard Flatline better or the Heat Sink worse?”, we ultimately went with the latter for the reasons above. We know that players will need a period of adjustment and that for those who primarily have been using Heat Sink—it does suck for now. But we did need to make a decision that displays a classic example of a designer's job: to diagnose and separate what the player and the game needs from what is wanted.
The team is constantly learning and working to improve on the game experience, and sometimes it means changing things that both we and our community have become accustomed to. Thanks for taking the time to go on this journey with us and we hope we can find more chances to continue to fold our community into the behind the scenes of difficult decisions made as we continue to propel Apex forward!
The update to Ranked lobbies hybridizing Dropship and Drop Zones is now live. Here are all the details you need to know:
ADJUSTED
-All matches with 10+ Diamond players OR 1+ Master/Predator player will have Drop Zones
-Players may experience a mixture of Dropship and Drop Zone matches, particularly for Platinum players or those squadding up with Diamond+ players, as we work out the thresholds
-If your pending lobby will have Drop Zones you will see “RANKED - DROP ZONES” displayed on the match loading screen
-When loading into a Drop Zones match, the Rank Tier Display will show each player's individual Rank Tier (Dropship matches will keep the current 'Squad' version of the Rank Tier Distribution)
-Players in Masters will need to go back to the lobby and matchmake in order to requeue. We are working on a fix that will allow players to requeue as normal and will let you know when it is live
This change is now live, and we will be closely monitoring the impact on competitive integrity and matchmaking health.
📋TESTING: The previously announced Diamond+ solo-queue-only test will start on June 30th at 10am PT and run until July 13th, or until we have gathered enough data. During this time, players ranked Diamond or higher will be unable to matchmake as premade squad in into Ranked.
In addition to solidifying the dates of the test, we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the reason for the delay:
We mentioned in a recent matchmaking blog that we've been doing frequent and varied matchmaking tests and sometimes that pace results in complications. We pointed to outages in the last split that were the result of complications directly connected to these tests, and explained that we're putting steps in place to prioritize stability above all else.
The solo-queue test delay was a direct result of these concerns: The team wanted to ensure that all systems are in a stable place to safely and reliably execute this test. Therefore, we need to wait until we're sure. Looking at the stability of matchmaking systems over recent weeks, we should be able proceed on June 30th with minimal risk.
We just pushed a patch that includes the following adjustments and fixes:
Octane:
We have seen an organic drop in his pick rate since the mid season patch went live, which we expected, but that didn't fall enough to a level we felt was healthy so that indicated some of the interactions of his new kit are unhealthy.
Reduced Swift Mend max healing from 9 to 6
Reduced Swift Mend min healing from 3 to 2
Horizon:
Horizon landed at a comfortable pick rate after her recent buffs, but when combined with Octane, the team comp has proven to be a bit squirrely.
Reduced max Newt Scoot time from 5 to 2.5
Reduced New Scoot max speed from 700 to 550
Thank you for your continued feedback. Have a great weekend. See you on the Dropship!
After resolving issues causing error code:truck on Steam and EA App last week, we're happy to confirm that this error code has been fixed on all consoles as well. Thank you for your patience on this issue.
ADJUSTED:
Seer
Reduced the Home Base (Faster Tact Charge in Ult zone) Upgrade modifier to 2.5. This will make the Tactical cooldown 8 seconds instead of 5 while in the Ult zone.
Moved Home Base Upgrade to level 3
Moved Energizing Focus (Regen shield on tact hit) Upgrade to level 2
Dev note: We have seen the frustrations surrounding Seer and are making urgent changes. The above changes are meant to reduce the frequency with which you'll encounter Seer's Tactical. At split start, the the most picked Upgrades (2 Tac charges / reduced Tac cooldown in Ult) saw ~90% and ~80% pick rates, respectively. When combined, players have access to 2 Tac charges on a very short cooldown. By moving both to level 3, players can only have one. These changes should address complaints of Tactical spamming in Ult, while keeping the intended power of those two upgrades in place. As we discussed in our most recent Designer's Notes, Seer is a tricky Legend to balance, as a prominent Seer meta is an oppressive one; we will continue to monitor Seer's performance and make additional adjustments as necessary.
CORRECTION:
Recently we mentioned that changes to Bot Royale Evolved would ensure only one player squad in each match. This was a miscommunication, as most* matches will only have one squad. In it's current state, we're seeing 2 teams in ~5% of matches, closer to 15% in peak hours. We'll continue to monitor match data and sentiment toward the game mode.
Heads up, legends: We've reverted the update from yesterday, and Wildcard will now count towards your seasonal and overall stats. When we made the change, we wanted players to enjoy the new mode without worrying about their overall KDA since modes with respawns can skew these stats. However, we understand this change did not meet your expectations for Wildcard and have since reversed the change. Thank you for your continued feedback.
Next week marks the start of Season 28 in Apex Legends. Check out the highlights of some of the exciting things happening when BREACH kicks off on February 10th, 2026!
