Is Apex safe to play after Destroyer2009 hacking incident? (Updated)

While we wait to see exactly what happened to Genburten and ImperialHal during Sunday's ALGS, many Apex players are left asking is Apex safe to play? Some pro players are avoiding the game entirely, with a few even resetting their entire PC.

There has been a lot of discussion, speculation and rumour about if Apex is safe to play. Let's break down the facts.

Since the hacking incident, Apex has now issued two separate fixes to improve security in Apex Legends.

The second of which launched today, alongside the Shadow Society Event. With that in mind, it is clear that EA and Respawn are working hard to make sure Apex is safe to play and remains that way.

Read on for the original article, written March 19.

The short answer is most likely yes. However, until the problem is identified and solved no one can say for certain. Lots of the people online suggesting what the issue with the game is are making assumptions. EA haven't issued any official statement, and it is likely that their investigation is still ongoing.

One initial worry was that all Easy Anti-Cheat games were unsafe. However, Easy Anti-Cheat have issued a statement saying they see no issues with their software. Taking this at face value, that means the issue lies with Apex Legends.

However, Apex might be totally safe to play, and it might have been the specific accounts or computers of Genburten and ImperialHal that were compromised.

Put simply, and at face value, it seemed Destroyer 2009 was able to access the computers of Genburten and ImperialHal to activate cheats.

For Genburten specifically, we saw a window appear that was not Apex. This makes it appear that somehow, Destroyer2009 was able to install something onto Genburtens computer.

We don't know if this was done by some sort of link, or if he accessed it through the game itself. Of course, this makes a big difference when considering if Apex is safe to play or not.

However, this weekend wasn't the first time we've seen Destroyer2009 meddle with Apex Legends. About a month ago he managed to spawn a hoard of enemy players to chase down and kill ImperialHal. He has also given thousands of packs to Hal and Mande.

The Apex community has been locked in heated discussion about how serious this Apex hacking issue is. However, the opinion everyone has been listening too is that of a Cyber Security expert.

Thor, from Pirate Software is an experienced coder and security expert. He worked for worked for Blizzard Entertainment, Amazon Games Studios, the United States Department of Energy where he hacked into Power Stations to check for weaknesses.

Thor even chatted with Mande and ImperialHal to better try to understand the issue.

While he did not have clear answers, he did explain that he feels the act of inserting players into Hal's game is actually more worrying than the actual ALGS hack. This is a sophisticated hack, with some big implications for Apex Legends.

However, he did explain that Apex is probably safe to play for the general population. The assumption was, if Destroyer2009 could access every Apex game in the world, why would he only target two players? You could cause some serious chaos if you had that power.

However, no one realistically knows the full scope of the Apex hacking issue or the power Destroyer2009 has at this time.

Ultimately, if you're worried about Apex not being safe to play, you can always choose not to play the game. However, with two patches issued and no hacking incidents since then, the game seems much safer than a couple of weeks ago.

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