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Apex Legends’ anti-cheat seems to be acting up and banning players for no reason. Season 13 had its fair share of issues including game-breaking bugs but it looks like despite Respawn’s best efforts, the issues continue to pile on. Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), which is the third-party anti-cheat program used in Apex Legends, is banning players for no reason and throwing errors. Players who are affected by these bans are unable to reach out to EA due to the poor communication from the support channels that are unable to resolve issues in time.
Third-party applications can cause issues with Easy Anti Cheat
Respawn is yet to address issues with its anti-cheat engine and social media platforms are flooded with posts complaining about EAC. While it is common knowledge that a lot of players use cheats and other bannable programs, a lot of players are claiming that they are banned because of the anti-cheat program crashing.
I personally have faced the “Anti-cheat failed to initialize” error myself and the game refused to work until a full restart. The bans are supposed to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis but whenever players send an appeal for bans to be reviewed, the support channels send back automated responses.
In January 2022, journalist Tom Henderson investigated cases of EAC malfunctioning and found out that the app banned players for using MSI Afterburner or some RGB apps in some cases. It is possible for anti-cheat apps to have issues and falsely ban players, but Respawn/EA’s support channels are often ineffective at resolving issues. In some cases, the connection to EAC’s servers time out due to internet issues, and the anti-cheat software ends up flagging players.
With bots replying to player tickets whenever issues are raised by them, it becomes impossible to create a direct line of contact for affected players. Respawn is yet to address the complaints by players regarding the issue and with EAC’s problems affecting not only Apex Legends, but also other EA games like Battlefield 2042, the developers should look into the issue and help legitimate players get access to their accounts once more.
