Apex Legends Piggy-Backers Are Now In Respawn's Crosshairs

Respawn's struggle with Apex Legends cheaters has already been well-documented, but there's another problem plaguing players: piggy-backing. When someone piggy-backs, they're essentially trying to farm experience points by joining games but not contributing to their team's success. They're dead weight, in other words, and in a team-based game, that's no good.Apex Legends players have been vocal about their distaste for piggy-backers, and now it seems that Respawn is going to start doing something about it. In a recent developer update, the company said that it will start handing out temporary bans to players who piggy-back during games.

In that developer update, Respawn said that a look at internal data shows that many matches are affected by this behavior to some degree. Though Respawn doesn't go into depth about how it will detect piggy-backing players, it says those who are exhibiting that behavior will be subject to temporary bans. In extreme cases, they may also be hit with a permanent ban, but again, it's unclear what constitutes an extreme case.

Lately, Respawn has been clamping down hard on cheaters. At the beginning of the month, the company said that the total number of accounts banned for cheating is now at 770,000, with cheat seller account bans topping 4,000. It won't be long before we cross the 1 million mark for total number of cheaters banned, so with its anti-cheat efforts seemingly working, it makes sense that Respawn would want to turn its attention to piggy-backers.

Respawn says that these changes to detect and punish piggy-backing aren't going live right away, but it's giving players who do it notice now to give them a chance to change their ways. We don't know when, exactly, this feature will be going live for that matter, but Respawn's post suggests that it'll be included in the next Apex Legends patch. Stay tuned for more.