Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale shooter Apex Legends has proven to be successful, with over 100 million unique players, and counted over 300,000 people playing on Steam on just one occasion in May. But a problem bubbling over from its earlier Titanfall games is now having an impression on Apex, as reports across social media show players running into messages from people hacking the sport with a “Save Titanfall” message.
Respawn acknowledged the problems on Twitter, saying “We are conscious of and actively investigating issues impacting @PlayApex playlists that are preventing players from stepping into matches.” during a follow-up tweet at 7 PM, the developer said these attacks don’t put the private information of players in danger, which the team is testing a fix. As of 10:15 PM, the developer appeared confident that problems for Apex Legends are resolved the difficulty went on for hours, and when players were affected, they couldn’t queue for brand spanking new games. All of this happened at an equivalent time that Apex is hosting special event drawing players back to the first versions of its first two maps (including divisive areas like Skulltown, pictured above).
As PC Gamer and Kotaku report, the messages are appearing for players on PC, Xbox One and PS4. I joined a game on PC and when the match was over, I used to be greeted with the subsequent message pointing to a “Save Titanfall” website. After Respawn indicated the issues were over, I managed to play a couple of matches with no odd messages or matchmaking problems beyond the standard ones, like not getting paired with enough/any teammates. It appears that whoever is behind this attack is doing it due to similar issues that have affected the Titanfall games going back years. a drag attributed to one person kicked players out of Titanfall 1 sessions on PC and inundated them with racist messages, making the multiplayer-only title largely unplayable, in a problem dating back to 2019.
In recent months Respawn has tweeted that “help is coming ASAP” and “the team is investigating” problems like DDOS attacks on the Titanfall series, but the problems continue. With hacking becoming a game-stopping problem for a franchise that EA is relying on to supply over $750 million in net bookings during its 2022 fiscal year, solutions can’t wait for much longer.
