After boosting themselves up the Ranked leaderboards, a ban wave has hit Apex Legends players abusing an Arenas exploit on console to farm AP.
Apex Legends is a competitive game at its heart and that means most of the time, every player in a match is doing their best to take home the victory.
This is especially true in Ranked, where every kill and decision has the potential to affect a player’s position on the ladder.
While some members of the community practice every day and work on their mechanics, others prefer to take a shortcut and abuse hacks or exploits.
Although this may pay dividends in the short term, it usually doesn’t take Respawn long to realize what’s really going on, and that’s exactly what’s happened with the latest ban wave.
Arenas Ranked exploiters hit with ban wave
Taking to Twitter on January 25, Security Analyst at Respawn Conor ‘Hideouts’ Ford announced that 568 players have been banned for abusing a “6-man” Arenas exploit.
It appears the exploit was only possible on console as no PC players have been banned just yet, with 466 PlayStation and 102 Xbox users all receiving suspensions.
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It’s worth noting that not all of the players were permanently banned from the game, with Hideouts making sure to mention that they were banned for “varying lengths” of time.
Each of their punishments will no doubt be based on how much they abused the exploit while it was active in the game.
568 Players banned for varying lengths for abusing a "6-man" arenas exploit to farm AP in ranked arenas.
PS-466Xbox-102
— Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) January 25, 2022
With Ranked being the best way in Apex Legends to test your skills against players of a similar level, it’s essential the devs keep everyone on a level playing field.
Although this likely won’t be the last Ranked exploit we see in Respawn’s battle royale, it’s great to see them taking an active approach and banning exploiters.