If hacking is unfortunately a common practice on the Internet and video games, it is rare that it can lead to a small war between two well-identified communities. Yet this is what happened during the recent hack ofApex Legends this week-end.
And the story is convoluted to say the least…
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Respawn's Unloved Child
It all started in March 2014, when the very young Respawn Entertainment studio released its first game titled Titanfall. This title playable in the first person and allowing to control giant mechas has forged a beautiful community over time... so much so that a sequel was launched two and a half years later. The American studio then remained silent until February 2019 with the surprise deployment of free-to-play Apex Legends. The latter is located in the same universe as Titanfall and quickly established itself in the very closed environment of battle royale, mobilizing a large part of the resources of the development teams.
Thus, for several months (even years), the PC version of the first Titanfall of the name has been abandoned. Players are complaining about poor server quality and repeated hacks that make the title "virtually unplayable", according to some. And Respawn likely remained deaf to these reports. A site SaveTitanfall.com has been put online by fans in an attempt to publicly expose these issues.
This is the starting point of our story for this beginning of the week.
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A hack that impacts two communities
So, this Sunday, it was Apex Legends' turn to suffer massive hacking for several hours. Many players could no longer connect to a game and came across messages pointing to the current state of Titanfall explaining "it's time to raise our voices" to push the developers to take action. In addition, the messages in question referred to a site: SaveTitanfall.com.
The aggressor was then designated and Apex Legends players rushed to the Titanfall community of the TF Remnant Fleet Discord server (considered to be one of the largest communities of the first opus), i.e. the creators of the site mentioned above. The server administrators had to react quickly to deny their involvement in the battle royale hack, while expressing their sympathy for Apex and wishing that "everything could return to normal quickly".
But the war has done damage to both sides and especially to this Titanfall community in terms of image (and despite the denials of their involvement). As for Apex Legends, the game is now accessible thanks to a patch deployed by Respawn. The studio reassures by informing that the private data linked to user accounts were not compromised in the operation.
