A group of hackers are preventing players from matchmaking in Apex Legends. They aren’t looking for money, nor are they trying to attack EA or Respawn, instead all they want to do is save Titanfall.
The situation in Titanfall
Titanfall has had a huge burst in popularity recently and a ton of people are now using its online matchmaking features. Unfortunately for them, the servers are plagued with hackers and glitches that can crash games and make it completely unplayable for nay regular fans of the title.
A group of concerned fans created the website savetitanfall.com where they outline the problems plaguing the game:
“Titanfall 1 is currently unplayable on PC due to hacker(s) using exploits that prevent players from being able to play the game. This issue has been happening for years and Respawn is willingly pretending that they do not know about the situation. To this day, Titanfall 1 is still on sale on the Origin, and more recently Steam, even though it is unplayable. Respawn, the developers, have been contacted about this matter numerous times in many ways. Even when the developers have been directly contacted, as soon as the topic of the Titanfall 1 problem is brought up, they stop replying.”
The fan response
In response to the apparent unwillingness of the developers and publishers of Titanfall, the fans decided to take matters into their own hands and force the issue to be resolved.
It looks like the hackers have tampered with playlist data in Apex Legends in an attempt to prevent players from entering matches. Instead of the normal names for the game modes, the in-game tooltips directed users to savetitanfall.com. It is important to note that the admins of savetitanfall.com are in no way related to the hackers attacking Apex Legends. It appears to be another person or persons who share their opinions.
This is a drastic attempt by the hackers to show Respawn and the fans of Apex Legends a taste of what they are experiencing when trying to play Titanfall on the PC.
The response from Respawn
In response to the attacks on Apex Legends, Respawn posted a lengthy Twitter thread:
“We are aware of and actively investigating issues impacting @PlayApex playlists that are preventing players from getting into matches.
The team is continuing to investigate the issue. We’ll provide hourly updates here until a fix is deployed and the problem resolved.
The team is still working on a fix and testing solutions. We’ll keep these hourly updates coming.
We’re testing a fix now and will update when we have more confidence. Additional updates may be required. In the meantime, we’ve determined that this attack—while disruptive—has not put players’ personal information or accounts at risk. More updates to come as we make progress.”
We’ve published a server update targeted at solving the matchmaking issue and are cautiously optimistic as we wait for the update to reach all servers (this typically takes hours).”
Eventually, the issues with Apex Legends were resolved, however, no mention was made of the reasoning behind the attack or their response to savetitanfall.com. Respawn is aware of the issues, they even claimed they were working on the issue in April 2021.
We're aware of ongoing DDOS attacks affecting @Titanfallgame.
To the Titanfall community: Help is coming ASAP.
— Respawn (@Respawn) April 5, 2021
It makes sense that Apex Legends is their priority, it is hugely popular, there are even Apex Legends esports out there, but the inactivity of the developers and their refusal to mention the issues does make it seem like they are dodging the issue.
I don’t agree with the hackers on either side of this issue, but I do understand their reason behind the attacks on Apex Legends.
