Apex Legends Global Series postponed due to mid-match hacks

Good Morning. Some interesting industry news for you here, as it seems Apex Legends has something of a hacker problem right now that has even messed up the Global Series esport tournament.

Announced by the official Apex Legends Esports account on X they said:

Due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised, we have made the decision to postpone the NA finals at this time. We will share more information soon.

There’s a few videos going around (#1, #2)  showing mid-match cheats suddenly happening to pro players during the tournament. According to the Anti-Cheat Police Department account on X (a volunteer group):

PSA: There is currently an RCE exploit being abused in @PlayApex. It is unsure whether it comes from the game or the actual anti-cheat (@TeddyEAC). I would advise against playing any games protected by EAC or any EA titles once they have fixed this or can comment. Currently, the RCE is being abused to inject cheats into streamers machines, which means they have the capabilities to do whatever, like installing ransomware software locking up your entire PC.

Even though Linux is quite different to Windows, it’s probably still best to avoid Apex Legends until the issue is resolved. While a lot of cheats and most malware / ransomware is designed for Windows – it still pays to be careful.

At time of writing neither EA nor Respawn have put up a statement on it.

This could end up being a problem for Linux and Steam Deck players too. Currently Apex Legends uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which clearly isn’t defending against these attacks. We’ve seen other EA published titles move over to EA AntiCheat, which blocks Linux, so hopefully EAC will combat it and we don’t get left with another broken game that moves over to EA’s own tech for it.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.