The North American leg of the ‘Apex Legends’ global series has been postponed after players were hacked.
The North American leg of the ‘Apex Legends’ global series has been postponed after players were hacked
They were targeted during the third match of the gaming tournament on Sunday (17.03.24), with Noyan ‘Genburten’ Ozkose of DarkZero noticing he could see other players in the game through the walls.
He raised the alert with his team by shouting “I’m getting hacked! It’s cheating! I can see everyone!”
The player then disconnected from the game, apparently to avoid any kind 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 – and when Genburten got hacked, the words “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 R4ndom” could be seen on screen.
It’s understood they were the handles of the hackers.
The official ‘Apex Legends’ esports account on X shared a message at 12.52am on Monday stating the North American finals had been postponed “due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised”.
A group called the Anti-Cheat Police Department claimed “an RCE exploit” was causing the hacks in the tournament and game and warned people not to play any EA games or titles protected by EAC anti-cheat until the source of the hacks could be found.
It also warned that anyone who participated in the tournament should reinstall their operating system to attempt to remove any malware from their machines, with users also told to change their Discord passwords.
EA is yet to confirm how the hack made its way onto players’ PCs.
The incident comes in the middle of job layoffs at ‘Apex Legends’ studio Respawn Entertainment, which brings the total number of developers laid off this year to more than 7,500, compared to 9,000 in all of 2023.