One of the best players in the first-person-shooter Apex Legends has been banned from competitive play. This ban comes after it was discovered that they somehow managed to get to the top without anybody noticing that they were using an aimbot to cheat.
In Apex Legend's ranked play, players battle against each other in order to climb the ranks in hopes of getting the prestigious Predator badge. However, any sort of ranked gameplay mode that involves skill-based matchmaking often results in less scrupulous players trying to win through hacks and cheats. Common ones for games like Apex Legend include hacks to automatically aim at other players and ones that let players walk and shoot through walls.
While developer Respawn Entertainment is generally quick to hand out bans when cheating is discovered, one PC player managed to make it to the upper echelons with their hacking undetected. In a tweet sent out yesterday by Apex Legends player @Skeptation, they called for the developers to ban "bob8511101," the #4 ranked player on the PC version of the game. The tweet accused "bob" and their squad of using aimbots in order to gain their position on the ranking board, a much more serious form of cheating than using an unexpected exploit.
The developers looked into the allegations and discovered that the player was indeed using aimbots, a hack that makes it much easier to aim at other players, and issued a ban. Josh Medina, one of the producers at Respawn Entertainment, reported on Twitter that the company slapped "bob" with the ban shortly after the tweet by @Skeptation was first sent out. According to Dexerto, Josh also replied to @Skeptation on Twitter to mention that the dev team usually doesn't provide updates to players when they ban someone.
Apex Legends has had more than its fair share of cheaters over its year and a half lifespan. Just a few months after the game's official release, the team behind Apex Legends revealed that they've banned over 700,000 cheaters. Running a highly-competitive game requires developers to stay on their toes and be ready to bring out the bans when players try and use hacks to get ahead.
Apex Legends is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Switch port coming later this year.
Source: Dexerto