The hashtag #SaveApexRanked has made the rounds on Twitter, which saw big streamers and professional players speak out on the hacking in the game.
The developer behind Apex, Respawn Entertainment, spoke out about tackling cheaters in a Twitter post yesterday. They said they’ll be hiring more people to focus on manual bans, would add tools to detect cheating and crank up the tempo on investigations. While everyone agreed on the sentiment that cheaters and hackers should be dealt with, a lot of streamers and pro players are frustrated with the studio and say more action should be taken, instead of giving out idle promises.
The Respawn team is pursuing several options to crack down on cheating in @playapex:
⚒️ Hiring more people to focus on manual bans
🔧 Developing more tools to automatically detect and stop DDOS attacks
🛑 Investigating ways to more quickly catch and remove cheaters from games— Respawn (@Respawn) June 28, 2021
Chris “Sweetdreams” Sexton from NRG made a twitlonger talking about empty promises and false hope, also launching the #SaveApexRanked hashtag. “Don’t let respawns tweet about intentions to help ranked fool you, we have heard these thanks multiple times in the past with NO results. Let this tweet serve as a way to hold them accountable for what they say is going to happen.”
Sweetdream’s post elicited a lot of responses from other professional players and streamers who felt the same way. The Director of Comms at Respawn, Ryan K. Rigney, responded to the post saying that some of the complaints are valid, while doubling down on the fact that Respawn are working hard at tackling the problem.
There are very valid complaints in here—we’ve gotta crack down on the cheating and make real progress. Actions are needed, not just words.
But I’m kinda bummed to read the last line. Idk why you’d reframe an effort to communicate as an attempt to “fool” players. Unproductive. pic.twitter.com/HTj9ZbvLkz
— Ryan K. Rigney (@RKRigney) June 28, 2021
In any case, the fact that a hashtag such as this one was able to spread and many people in the community feel the same way, could turn into a serious problem for the Apex scene. Respawn has the difficult job of finding ways to more effectively crack down on cheaters, or it might lose touch with their players. Being more open about it, like Tencent did with PUBG Mobile, could help.
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