Season 2 of Apex Legends was a highly anticipated addition of new content and gameplay experiences to a game which had grown stale over the course of Season 1. Ranked Mode was a huge part of that, especially for competitive players.
So far, the competitive meta for Apex Legends has involved pub-stomping lobbies. Kill-farming forms the fundamentals of the gameplay, not so much the skill or aim of the players. Farm the most kills, win the tournament.
This is neither exciting to watch or very compelling for streamers due to the 60-second delay on gameplay. Ranked Apex Legends was going to be the format that saved the day, rescued the competitive scene, and gave something for streamers to work towards.
For the first few days of Ranked, everything seemed to be working normally. Apex viewership was up on Twitch, and the in-game lobbies loaded faster than ever, as new and old players came to the game to enjoy the new content.
Then the cheaters started to appear. At first, there were only a few, popping up in people’s streams here and there. Some of the first players to get to Platinum in NA, like Skadewdle or NRG_Mohr, started to see more and more cheaters in their games.
And that’s in North America. Players over in OCE and SEA have it much worse. Due to the ranked mode having longer queues, there is a lot of cross-region play. Australian players queue with Malaysians, Chinese and Singaporeans regularly.
Chinese streamers play with cheaters to boost their rank. They pay for the privilege on Chinese websites, even on the Asian equivalent of Amazon you can find people selling their cheating services.
They come in different shapes and sizes. Achuang (Chinese slang for ‘a bed’) is a common one, though names of many numbers or random letters are also a dead giveaway of a hacker in your game.
Back at the start of Fortnite’s growing success, Epic invested heavily in anti-cheating measures. As a result, the game is pretty much entirely cheater free.
Respawn, to guarantee the long-lasting success of its game, needs to address cheaters. In each of their updates, there is a small mention of the problem, saying they’re working on it, or that they’ve banned so many players.
However, cheaters are still a prevalent problem. They frustrate the player base and frustrate the streamers promoting the game 12 hours a day. If they can’t remove hackers then the game will face serious issues in the long-run.
