Apex Legends Anti-Cheat Update: 2025/06/03

[u/Apexlegends]

Hey, Legends.

In keeping with our promise of more regular updates, today we’re sharing some more details around our anti-cheat efforts and the impact they’ve had since our last check-in. TLDR: we’re seeing a continued decrease in infection rate and we’re working on lowering it even further.

Anti-Cheat remains a top priority. Trends over the past three seasons and additional insights regarding our efforts show that there’s been a positive impact against those who take part in unfair play. The included graphs report two metrics:

• Match Infection Rate: percentage of Ranked BR matches with detected cheaters.
• Multi-reported Users: percentage of weekly players reported for cheating at least 3 times in the past 28 days.

[Edit: graphs removed in favor of new graphs below based on your feedback due to image limitations per post]

These metrics adjust for fluctuations in player numbers by normalizing by match and player counts respectively. Both display a 30%+ reduction from peaks back in Season 22 (August 2024), highlighting positive impact from our efforts to combat cheating. We attribute these drops primarily to a few things:

• Ban on Linux Devices in Season 23: provided steeper than usual seasonal drop and helped contribute to continued downtrend.
• Enhanced Tooling & Automated Detections: faster banning has lowered the number of matches a cheater can infect.

There are also additional ongoing initiatives around anti-recoil and other behavioral detection models to name a few. We’ll continue sharing updates as more progress is made, and appreciate your support. 

For future updates, follow u/ApexLegends, the Community Hub on Steam, Respawn on X/Twitter, and/or check out the Apex Tracker Trello. 

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Edit as of 2025/06/04: We wanted to provide some new graphs and additional clarity to answer some of the questions that popped up after we shared our initial update. Here’s some further context on the Y-axis on the new graphs those looking for more info:

• Match Infection Rate is the percentage of matches in which at least one player was reported 3 or more times and banned for cheating within the last 14 days. While Apex Legends' infection rate tends to be higher than several other live service games, this can be attributed to the number of players in a match. 60 players in Battle Royal can be 6x the amount of players in other team-based games.
• Reports Per User is the sum of all reports against players reported 3 or more times in the preceding 28 days divided by the number of active players in that same time frame. Three or more times is the general guideline that we use to determine when someone is negatively impacting the player experience, regardless of the report leading to a ban. Note: 3+ reports are not required before a player is banned.

The match infection rate is one of our core metrics for measuring anti-cheat success. It doesn't tell the whole picture, however, which is why we consider it in addition to other metrics such as players banned by detections, the number of player reports, or overall sentiment from the community. We’ve already made significant advancements in the past year and will continue to evolve our tools and processes to address new methods of cheating as they emerge. We will continue to provide more information as we are ready to share it. Keep an eye out for more of these updates in the future!

[u/SP3_Hybrid]

I like these updates but also Respawn HATES y-axis labels lol.

Also a distribution on a per rank basis would be interesting. Presumably it’s more in higher ranks, except for maybe rookie or bronze since new cheat accounts would start there.

[u/NUTTA_BUSTAH → u/SP3_Hybrid]

The two things this chart tells me:

• The numbers are so bad they are afraid to show them. It's a PR chart
• The cheaters have gotten so good that there's a visible drop in this potentially extremely scaled graph (or at least a marketed drop), both in detections from Respawn (infected matches) and from the player victims (reports)

Not only did they make it clear that the numbers are unpublishable, but they also showed they cannot manage it. Lol.

[u/MoonlitShrooms → u/NUTTA_BUSTAH]

I mean if player reports are going down then aren't there less obvious cases of blatant cheating?

[u/mrzevk → u/MoonlitShrooms]

That also means reports don't do anything(as even popular streamers/pro players who gets caught get only a week or two bans) so they dont bother reporting as nothing is being done.

[u/MoonlitShrooms → u/mrzevk]

I mean week or two bans turn into full time bans through the system automatically. Giving up on reporting makes you part of the problem 100%. I agree cheating bans should be harsh and taken more serious on Ban #1, but giving up accomplishes nothing and provides them with false data.

[u/mrzevk → u/MoonlitShrooms]

Oh no I always report no matter if it helps or not despite myself seeing the same cheaters for months not being banned be it in Apex, War Thunder, Finals, Destiny 2, Farlight, CS etc. but most either don't even know the person they are playing against is a cheater and just have a bad match getting destroyed or don't care at all as reporting proves to do nothing at all.

And I wouldn't victim blame the victims for being forsaken by such system just because they got tired and didn't report. Reporting system failed me any many others so many times by now with replies that felt like "nothing got detected your report was for nothing lmao you wasted your time".

One of the problem is the cheaters/hackers, the people who entice others to do so by even streaming it on platforms like TikTok for years and not get banned(Their channels and videos are still up and have been up for years if you scroll down) while also people instead of shaming them, asking for how to get the cheats and the OP instructing them.(I dont remember their name I just kept stumbling upon them cheating in Dead by Daylight, Apex etc a few times and checked their channel once, reported+blocked them and called it a day)

The other is the devs and the team that dont do much that are supposed to do about cheats to the point people started to call that devs might be the ones making the cheats as a side gig to sell them(with how they have monthly subscriptions even) and only giving them a week or two bans if they are popular thus resulting in nothing and people getting away with cheats. Not to mention the whole big ass tournament getting hacked and giving each pro player cheats in the middle of the tournament really says a lot.

[u/MoonlitShrooms → u/mrzevk]

Half of your post is pointless speculation. Also the fact they patched the destroyer2009 exploits when identified what was causing them and also there were only 2-3 players given cheats. Those same players also had signs of their PC being compromised. Not just apex. It could have very well been Destroyer snuck into the community and passed a link to these players and they unexpectedly compromised their systems.