Respawn Entertainment and EA have banned 416,533 accounts in Apex Legends for cheating since the launch of Season 23: From the Rift back in November 2024.
The milestone was shared through an EA update on the game’s anti-cheat systems, promising new features and better detections in future seasons.
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How Bans Have Changed Over the Seasons
A new anti-cheat system was added back in Season 23 to combat bad actors and cheaters in the battle royale game. This system allowed Respawn to review different types of ‘unfair play’ based on ‘gameplay indicators’.
According to data shared by the developers, the total number of bans has fluctuated with each season since the new system was added. The highest number of bans was seen in Season 23, with over 115,000 at launch and nearly 85,000 by the split — the second half of a season. By comparison, Season 24: Takeover had only roughly 51,500 bans at launch and 47,000 within the split, half of the previous season.
Season 25: Prodigy, however, has seen a steady increase in bans. The number of accounts removed at launch rose to just over 61,000, and the number of bans since the split has also reached over 57,000.
Respawn Entertainment also shared data on match infection rates, or the percentage of matches that had at least one player who was reported for cheating on three occasions within the last 14 days. For PC, rates rose to as high as 10.2% during the Season 23 split, but have since declined to as low as 6.1% during Season 25’s launch. In the console pool, the rates rose to as high as 0.5% in the Season 24 split, but remained at a steady 0.2% throughout Prodigy.
In summary, the new system made a major impact in Season 23, so much so that cheating saw a significant drop in the following season. However, as third parties have steadily found ways to work around the new system, cheating has been on the rise in Season 25, and so action had to be taken more frequently.
Updates to Anti-Cheat
Respawn Entertainment has shared developments to the anti-cheat system it has recently made, alongside plans for future features.
The anti-cheat system’s detection has made ‘progress in a number of areas’, including a new report option for wallhacking and ‘impossible game sense’. Reports for teaming have also dropped by 33% compared to February, with better detections added based on gameplay indicators.
Furthermore, following an AMA back in May, new priorities have been made. Respawn shared about how it is tackling ‘bot farms’ as it continues to work on its automated ‘Bot Detection model’, which is still in progress. It is also developing in-house detection models for other forms of cheating, specifically input manipulations and anti-recoil.
Dates for when these features will be released were not specified; however, Respawn Entertainment emphasised that updates to anti-cheat will be shared across blogs, forums, and on social media ‘throughout the year’.
Source: https://esportsinsider.com/
