Apex Legends players looking for a legitimate round or two of friendly competition in the battle royale over the 4th of July weekend were wholly unable to do so during the period for reasons entirely out of its developer’s control. For those that missed the debacle, hackers infiltrated the game’s servers on Sunday and swiftly proceeded to replace text in the main menu with the phrase “Save Titanfall”, aiming to redirect users to an unaffiliated website of the same name dedicated to raising awareness of cheating and DDoS attacks in the first-person shooter and its sequel.
The original Titanfall, in particular, has long been plagued by illicit activity and, due to its single-player portion requiring a constant internet connection to play, has resulted in accusations of publisher EA knowingly selling the title in a near-unplayable state. Noble aims or not, however, Respawn has naturally decried the act as not only irresponsible but foolish and a complete waste of time. The studio’s head of comms, Ryan K. Rigney, used Twitter to vent their frustration over the issue, in the process revealing that he, and likely other staff, were forced to work overtime in order to address the hack.
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In reference to an article published by TheGamer detailing the downtime, Rigney reveals how he had to miss out on a “day with family”, including his newborn nephew, and return to the office to help restore service – a process which took in total around 10 hours. As for whether the attacks have had any impact whatsoever on prompting Respawn to fast-track fixes for Titanfall, Rigney bluntly states that attempts to deliver DDoSing solutions has “never stopped” and that when an answer is inevitably found, “it won’t be because hackers made us aware’ by ruining a holiday.”
For now, at least, Apex Legends remains fully accessible, but questions certainly remain with regard to just how secure its servers are from subsequent intrusions.
