The Anti-Cheat team behind Apex Legends has shared the results of an investigation into matches that kept dying for no obvious reason. It turned out to be an exploit built around Ballistic’s Sling passive, used to deliberately crash game servers. The suspected player has a permanent account ban and the hole itself has been patched.
What the exploit actually did
The team started looking into a player who seemed to be causing lobbies to crash over and over again. The investigation pointed at Ballistic’s Sling passive: with a modified game client, the player duplicated a weapon optic far beyond the intended limit. Enough duplicated items put such a heavy load on the server that the match stopped responding and eventually crashed for everyone in the lobby.
The point wasn’t just griefing. After the crash, the player reconnected to the match and tried to take advantage of everyone else still being disconnected. If you want a refresher on what Ballistic and the rest of the roster bring to a match, we have a rundown of all Legends and their abilities.
Ban and fix
Once the behavior was identified, the team worked to understand it, confirm the cause, and ship a fix so the exploit can’t be used to disrupt matches again. Alongside that:
- the suspected user received a permanent account ban,
- all accounts found using this exploit are being actioned,
- a fix is already in place on the server side of things.
Respawn says it takes intentional match disruption seriously – exploiting vulnerabilities to crash lobbies and interfere with other players’ ability to play is unacceptable, and reports of this kind of behavior will keep being investigated with action taken whenever abuse can be confirmed. The team also thanked everyone who reported suspicious lobby crashes and supplied information that helped the investigation. Fair play is for everyone.
Where to read more
Enforcement news has been piling up lately – we also covered the wave of Predator account bans and the switch of PC anticheat to EA Javelin. Everything else around the game lands in our Apex Legends news hub.
FAQ
A modified game client abused Ballistic’s Sling passive to duplicate a weapon optic far beyond its intended limit. Enough duplicated items overloaded the server, the match became unresponsive and then crashed for the whole lobby.
No. The team confirmed the cause and implemented a fix so the exploit can’t be used to disrupt matches again.
The suspected player received a permanent account ban. All other accounts found using the same exploit are being actioned as well.
According to the announcement, the player reconnected to the match after the crash and tried to take advantage of the other players being disconnected.
Yes. The team thanked everyone who reported suspicious lobby crashes and provided information that helped with the investigation.