Have you ever worked on a group project in school with someone that just coasts the entire project but gets their equal share of the grade? Or maybe you were that person? Well, Respawn isn’t a fan of that mentality of teamwork, something they emphasize quite heavily in Apex Legends, and are looking to start temp-banning for people who piggyback off their teammates’ hard work.
Announced on their subreddit, the new policy is the result of feedback from the community about players who are joining matches and then just doing nothing to grind out experience. This isn’t about people who are timid or bad, this is about people who just don’t do anything.
“We had been seeing some feedback from players around this and have been doing some internal investigations looking at game data to understand how many of the matches being played are affected by this behavior,” community manager Jay Frechette posted. “After looking at the data and internal discussions, we’ve decided that in the future we’ll start instituting temp bans for players that exhibit piggy-backing behavior and extreme cases could lead to a permanent ban. This change will not be immediate but wanted to give a heads up to players so you can adjust that behavior.”
One of the aspects of Apex Legends that is often praised by the player base is how willing Respawn is to go after what they view as cheating or anti-competitive behavior. The developer recently said they have banned 770,000 players from the game for cheating, which likely puts other players’ minds at ease that the playing field is fairly even.
It is not clear when this new policy will roll out, but idlers have been given warning that their Apex Legends days are numbered if they persist.