Cheating remains to be a problem in many games and Apex Legends is no different. Developers typically put measures in place to mitigate such problems. Apex Legends has done so as well, but cheaters continue to find ways to beat the system and in this case, the latest attempts are known as soft cheating.
During the first week of April, Respawn Entertainment initiated a ban on hackers and cheaters. In the past, actions like these result in banned players simply making a new account. This time around, Respawn targeted the hardware ID of the players resulting in them not being able to join the game once they have been banned. Even with this in place, Apex Legends continue to suffer from players who use aimbots, among other cheats.
In a Reddit post by user DarthAesder, it appears that the ban wave worked pretty well, as the chances of encountering a cheater was lowered to around 10%. However, there has been an increase in cheaters thanks to this new soft cheating technique.
Soft cheating is when cheaters tweak their aimbots so that it becomes undetected by anti-cheat algorithms. Thus, rather than getting 100% hit rate, the aimbots are adjusted so that the hit rate is only 70% for example. The aimbot is still activated, but the anti-cheat system will think it's a human. For DarthAesder, soft cheating is worse than full-on cheating, since "new players are disillusioned because they think they are being outplayed on pure skill, and veteran players being killed instantly makes one suspicious of cheats which actually punishes good players."
Another problem with soft cheating is that detecting the account that cheated is difficult. So far, the only method is to report the account and hope Respawn takes action.
There is no word from Respawn regarding this latest cheating technique, but there is a high possiblity that it will be addressed. It should be remembered that back in March, Respawn put in place anti-cheat measures which resulted in almost half a million accounts being banned.
For now, players need take what they have right now, and hope the game they are currently playing has no cheaters.
