A huge controversy has just shaken the Apex Legends community, the multiplayer shooter from Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts. Last weekend, an official tournament was held with a prize pool of $5 million, but in the middle of one of the matches, two professional competitors were hacked by someone who activated cheating tools. After several days, the person responsible came forward and confessed that she did it to send an important message to Respawn.
What happened in the Apex Legends millionaire tournament?
The Apex Legends World Champion, Genburtenhe was able to capture everything on his stream and then uploaded the clip to his account. Twitter. He was in the middle of a game in the tournament Apex Legends Global Series when he suddenly lost complete control of his game, and even started seeing all the other players through walls, something that can only be done through hacks that activate illegal cheats.
Genburten realized this and immediately began to exclaim: “I’m being hacked!”, to warn all viewers. For a brief moment, what appears to be a menu of cheating tools titled TSM HALAL HOOK and you can even see a message in the chat that says: «The Apex Global Hacking Series, by Destroyer2009 and R4andom«.
And that was not all, because another professional Apex Legends player known as ImperialHal He was also hacked in the middle of a game, in which he was activated Aimbot, a tool that allows a player to automatically shoot enemies without having to aim. These situations are particularly interesting, because the hackers were forcing tournament participants to use nefarious cheating tools that would normally get them kicked out of the competition. As expected, all of this led to Respawn suspending and postponing the tournament, due to “the competitive integrity of the game had been compromised”.
But then… Who was responsible for all this? And why did he do it? The place TechCrunch had the opportunity to speak with Destroyer2009, who admitted to being one of the hackers involved. In addition to taking full responsibility for the incidents, he explained that he did it for two reasons: For fun and, even more importantly, to send a message to Respawn and force them to fix the vulnerability in Apex Legends that allowed him to do all this in the first place. .
Destroyer2009 did not want to go into details about how he carried out the Apex Legends Global Series hacks, but clarified that he never officially reported it because neither Respawn nor Electronic Arts have a rewards program which offers monetary remuneration to hackers and researchers who find vulnerabilities like this. According to Destroyer2009, they know exactly how to fix it without the need to report it to them and that this was just a warning so that it doesn’t escalate.
All of this is vitally important, as these incidents shook the entire community, with several professional players and content creators stating that it is no longer safe to play Apex Legends and that everyone is at risk of being hacked, not just those who They participated in the tournament. The official Respawn team later made a statement on Twitter, where they assured that the safety of their players is their highest priority and that they have already carried out updates to create a safer experience for everyone. At the end of the day, it seems that Destroyer2009’s unconventional methods served to improve the game.
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