In context: Whenever you have a multiplayer game with tens of millions of players, there is going to be a certain percentage that cheat. It is inevitable, which is why purges are frequent. Apex Legends is no different. Even after banning two percent of its player base, Drew McCoy says Respawn will continue to vigilantly attack cheaters "from every angle."
Since launch, Respawn has expelled nearly a million Apex Legends accounts for cheating. Last month, Respawn's Community Manager Jay Frechette said they had banned 499,937 accounts for not playing by the rules.
According to yesterday's EA Developer Update, this month that number is up to 770,000. If you count blocked account creations (300,000) and banned cheat seller accounts (4,000), Respawn has taken down more than a million cheaters.
That number accounts for about two percent of its player base. As we reported back in February, Apex Legends had 25 million players just after its first week. Less than a month later, Respawn tweeted that it had topped 50 million players.
However, the battle is not over, nor is it won. As with all online games, keeping the cheats at bay is a full-time operation. Respawn is continually working on improving the ways it detects and handles those who are out to ruin the game for the rest.
"We can't share details on what we're doing so as to not give a head's up to the cheat makers, but what we can say is that we're attacking this from every angle," said the game's producer Drew McCoy. "We take cheating in Apex Legends incredibly seriously and have a large amount of resources tackling it from a variety of angles. It is a constant war with the cheat makers that we will continue to fight."