NFL
By: Brook M. Hill
So let’s talk video games guys. I don’t know about you but, I am a die-hard battle royale girly, and my favorite by far is Apex Legends.
If you don’t know about Apex, it is a multi-player battle royale game; released by EA on February 4th, 2019. There are currently more than 130 million active players. With 25 playable legends all based after TitanFall, an earlier game; it is one of, if not the top free-to-play games from EA.
Now, brace yourself for the drama bubbling amongst all of us fans. On March 17th Apex held their North American Finals. It is a global competition full of professional gamers; two of whom were ImperialHal and Genburten. If you know, you know. Well, during the middle of the competition, with HAL and Genburten thriving, their entire team fell victim to a serious hack. That ended in the entire tournament being canceled and; a game ban for Imperial HAL and, other teammate Verhulst.
So from what I can gather, what happened was, in a full lobby of 20 squads consisting of 3 players each; Genburten suddenly had a random menu appear on his screen. A menu of modifications full of hacks like aim-bot, recoil, and wall hacks, which shows you where every single player is located at on the map. Genburten immediately threw his hands up and started yelling that, “It wasn’t me”, “I’m not doing anything.” He then left the entire game to avoid penalties on his account, and people are furious! Not only at the lack of security in the game, but also because, people no longer feel safe playing the game. If the pro players can be hacked, the rest of us definitely can!
They did confirm another gamer, Destroyer2009 as the hacker. So far no one knows why, or how, he did it but, everyone seems to agree on him being the culprit. This situation seems oddly similar to how a hacker called Tufi used to follow and mess with pro gamers. This is the first time a tournament has ever been hacked in the history of the game.
An update from the @PlayApex team: pic.twitter.com/fuwKYmHFVP
— Respawn (@Respawn) March 20, 2024
At the end of all of this both banned gamers (HAL and Genburten), have made new accounts after being banned. And now the safety of everyday gamers is in question.
How are hackers still such an issue after 5 years?
Why is it not being addressed by EA?
Is the game still safe for us normal folk, or are we at a risk as well?
So many questions have been brought to light over this, and as a gamer I understand it all. We shall wait and see what else comes of this, but I’ll keep you all posted!
Until next time friends!
