The North American Apex Legends finals have been postponed after hackers appeared to give competitors cheats in the middle of tournament games, in an unprecedented attack on a major esports event.
The Apex Legends esports X account said the decision to stop and postpone the event, which was running on Sunday, March 17, had been taken “due to the competitive integrity of this series being compromised.”
Official comment on the incident ends there, but clips circulating online showed players suddenly being given cheats like aimbots and wall hacks while matches were ongoing.
One clip showed Apex pro Genburten shout“I’m getting hacked, I’m getting hacked!” as a wall hack revealed the location of every player in the match on his screen. Genburten threw his hands up in the air, exclaimed, “It’s cheating!” and left the game as quick as he could. “What the fuck?” he said, visibly distressed.
NO WAY <a href=«https://twitter.com/Genburten?ref_src=» https:>@Genburten
getting hacked mid algs game pic.twitter.com/PaVOjmnEGs
In another clip, player ImperialHal found himself unable to shoot, apparently after a hacker enabled an aimbot which was then detected and blocked by the game’s anti-cheat mechanism. “I cannot shoot, I cannot shoot,” he said.
The hackers have now given 2 Apex Legends pro players cheats in the middle of an ALGS match.
ImperialHal has now also been hacked and the hacker forcibly enabled aimbot on his account mid game.
Have never seen something like this in esports. pic.twitter.com/VY30Q21Dok
There’s no precedent for a hacking attack on a private game lobby that’s running such a high-profile competition. In the Genburten clip, the streamer’s chat can be seen to read “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom.”
The Anti-Cheat Police Department — an X account that tracks cheating in games — identified the hack as a remote code execution (RCE) exploit that was targeting a vulnerability, either in the networking code of Apex Legends itself, or of the
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