If you wanted to play Apex Legends over the weekend, you may have faced a problem: some playlists were blocked. The reason for this was a hacker attack with an unusual intent: the perpetrators want to save Titanfall. We explain what exactly happened and why Titanfall is in a dire situation in the first place.
The apex hack is a protest
An important piece of information if you are not familiar with the games involved: Apex Legends is a spin-off from Titanfall, both are developed and maintained by Respawn Entertainment. To Player Numbers Apex is currently the fourth largest Steam game, with nearly 250,000 concurrent players in the last 24 hours.
That happened: For a few hours, the hack blocked playlists on all platforms in Apex, and players could not join matches. Instead, a message popped up on the website savetitanfall.com refers. Most of the servers were apparently affected.
This is the goal of the Apex attack: A hack in this popular game naturally attracts a lot of attention – and that’s exactly what the hackers wanted. Because they want to draw attention to a problem that gives many players stomach ache: Titanfall 2 has been plagued by hacks for months, Titanfall 1 has even become almost completely unplayable. A large part of the community thinks that the developers are not reacting appropriately to this.
Titanfall’s biggest problem: Titanfall 2 has been suffering from regular DDOS attacks for a long time, causing server failures and the like. Behind this is probably a single hacker or a very small group under the name »Jeanue« who attacked the first Titanfall and completely paralyzed the server: His Steam-Reviews illustrate the desperate state and are just 36 percent positive. Players have been asking for help from the developers or publisher EA for months, but so far, shockingly little has happened. In May, a developer on Twitter announced that they were working on the problems but were frustrated:
Link to Twitter content
“(…) The situation that affects the Titanfall games right now is so frustrating. It takes weeks of work to tackle every new thing. Instead of developing new things, building incredible things for the players, our people tear themselves apart Hair out for the latest exploits, the latest attacks, a new way of attacking streamers or high-ranking lobbies or anyone. “
This is how the players react
But despite the news from the developer, many Titanfall fans have little understanding. They demand:
- That technical weaknesses are eliminated that make such serious hacker attacks possible in the first place
- That Respawn and EA communicate better with the community about the issues
- That Titanfall 1 will no longer be sold until the issues are resolved – or at least only with a clear warning to new players
Many people approve of the Apex hack because they hope that the developers will be forced to react. Such actions have been required for a long time on Reddit and Co., for example here:
“To be completely honest, I wish Apex Legends would be attacked by hackers. Then Respawn would act immediately and if they didn’t do the same for Titanfall, there would be a lot of headwinds. Don’t get me wrong, I know that this system is very complex and changes take time, but honestly, Respawn just doesn’t care. “
Also in Twitter comments The action is very popular, although of course it is still an illegal attack on Apex Legends. It remains to be seen whether something will really change at Titanfall.
The situation around Titanfall is all the more sad because both games are really good shooters that are backed by an enthusiastic community. And 2021 is the perfect year to get into Titanfall 2 – Dimi explains why in his column.
