Over the Independence Day weekend, Apex Legends players were subjected to a very specific hacking attack headed by disgruntled players of Titanfall’s online modes, with playlist notifications modified to advertisements for a Save Titanfall website that claims Respawn Entertainment and EA are ignoring an ongoing hacking problem with Titanfall.
While this attempt at raising awareness through Respawn’s other online shooter might have been an otherwise sympathetic cause, the hack also prevented players of Apex from actually playing the game, which likely closed a lot of hearts and minds to the plight. Furthermore, director of communication for Respawn Entertainment Ryan Rigney has clapped back at the stunt, saying that the hacking did nothing more than force devs to work on a holiday to fix Apex.
“I was holding my newborn nephew when I found out about the Apex hack. Had to hand him back, go work, and miss out on a day with family.
“The team has never stopped working on DDoS solutions, and anti-cheat is just a never-ending war of whack-a-mole. On the DDoS front, we WILL solve this. When we do, I promise you it won’t be because hackers ‘made us aware’ by ruining a holiday. They achieved nothing of value.”
Rigney additionally called attention to previous acknowledgments of the problems plaguing Titanfall. “The problem’s not awareness. It’s that DDoSing in particular is just a hard problem to solve. Really hard,” he writes.
