The North American leg of the Apex Legends global series has been postponed after multiple players were hacked during an official match.
During the third match on Sunday, March 17, Noyan ‘Genburten’ Ozkose of DarkZero noticed that he could see other players in the game through the walls. He quickly raised the issue with his team, shouting “I’m getting hacked! It’s cheating! I can see everyone!” He disconnected from the game, presumably to avoid some sort of penalty for cheating in an official tournament match.
Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen of TSM was then given an aimbot, a hack that allows players to shoot with pinpoint accuracy. When Genburten got hacked, the words “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom” could be seen on screen, presumably the handles of the individuals responsible for the security breach.
The official Apex Legends esports Twitter account shared a tweet at 12:52am stating the North American finals had been postponed “due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised”.
Due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised, we have made the decision to postpone the NA finals at this time.
We will share more information soon.— Apex Legends Esports (@PlayApexEsports) March 18, 2024
A voluntary organisation called the Anti-Cheat Police Department claimed “an RCE exploit” was causing the hacks in Apex. It warned people not to play any EA games or titles protected by EAC anti-cheat until it could be determined where the hacks were coming from.
A statement given by EAC on Twitter reads, “We have investigated recent reports of a potential RCE issue within Easy Anti-Cheat. At this time – we are confident that there is no RCE vulnerability within EAC being exploited. We will continue to work closely with our partners for any follow up support needed.”
It also advised that anyone who participated in the tournament reinstalls their operating system to attempt to remove any malware from their machines. It also suggested changing Discord passwords.
However, EA is yet to confirm how the hack made its way onto players’ PC’s.
The incident comes in the middle of layoffs at Apex Legends studio Respawn Entertainment. It seems the people affected were part of the 670 job cuts EA announced back in February. This brings the total number of developers laid off this year to over 7,500, compared to 9,000 in all of 2023.
In March 2023, EA reportedly booted over 200 Apex Legends testers via Zoom. Later that month, the company cut approximately six percent of its workforce.