Respawn Entertainment are aware and investigating a bug relating to Apex Legends account bans, which appears to be banning players for seemingly no reason at all.
On May 12, many players began reporting that their account was banned after being disconnected from a match.
The issues generally appear to be most concentrated for Steam users, but players on Origin have also experienced the issue. So far, only PC players are reporting the problem.
It was suspected that the banned accounts may have been related to using exploits or smurfing, but EA help has indicated that the bans are mistakes, apologizing for the confusion.
On Twitter, EA Help responded to one banned user writing: “A lot of players have received the ban message today and our Apex team is currently investigating this.
“Apologies for the confusion and thanks for sticking with us while they look into this.”
Small update: A lot of players have received the ban message today and our Apex team is currently investigating this.Apologies for the confusion and thanks for sticking with us while they look into this. -Sue
— EA Help (@EAHelp) May 12, 2021
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The issue has cropped up shortly after the 1.68 update for Apex Legends rolled out on May 11, so it could potentially be linked to an error in the update, although nothing is confirmed yet.
Later on May 12, EA Help said that login issues for Apex Legends had been resolved. It’s unclear if this means all wrongfully banned accounts have now been unbanned.
We’ve fixed the login issues some of you were having with #ApexLegends – thanks for your reports!
— EA Help (@EAHelp) May 12, 2021
All we know for now is that the development team at Respawn is investigating, and any unfair bans should be overturned.
If you log on today to find you Apex Legends account is banned – don’t panic.
We will update this story as more details emerge from either Respawn or EA.