Wow it finally happened. So glad I switched to steam running on linux mint last week. I refused to install helldivers because it wanted to install some no holds barred god level permissions anti-cheat software. Windows 11 was the last straw for me. Good times…
The volunteers at the Anti-Cheat Police Department have since issued a PSA announcing, “There is currently an RCE exploit being abused in [Apex Legends]” and that it could be delivered via from the game itself, or its anti-cheat protection. “I would advise against playing any games protected by EAC or any EA titles”, they went on to say.
As for players of the tournament, they strongly recommended taking protective measures. “It is advisable that you change your Discord passwords and ensure that your emails are secure. also enable MFA for all your accounts if you have not done it yet”, they said, “perform a clean OS reinstall as soon as possible. Do not take any chances with your personal information, your PC may have been exposed to a rootkit or other malicious software that could cause further damage.”
So what’s going on? These players all had cheats loaded and this is the excuse they came up with when it was detected on their systems? Cheats are pretty rampant, but they’ve mostly shifted to people using external hardware like XIM or Chronos to bypass cheat detection and abuse the Aim Assist function. It’s blatantly obvious in competitive games, especially first-person shooters. Ah well, get gud kid. Learn how to aim.
In another thread for this, someone posted links to streams of the players when it happens. They immediately notice and adjust their playstyle to avoid the cheat (one guy with wall hack leaves the game, another guy with aim bot stops shooting anything). It wasn’t a case of “game detects cheating and player tries to explain after the fact”, but “cheat suddenly and obviously enabled, player announces it immediately in voice chat and team advises to leave”.