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Around five days ago I reported on Apex Legends doing a ban wave which for the second time hit a bunch of players on Linux and Steam Deck playing it with Proton. Now at least the developer Respawn is looking into it.

While I've been updating the previous article, it's probably a good idea for a fresh report to keep people up to date on what's happening. There's been quite a lot of confirmed reports of bans now, with the majority of which being Linux desktop players but a few who play on Steam Deck were also caught up in it.

My emails to various EA contacts went unanswered, but thankfully a Respawn staff member on the community run, developer supported Reddit replied officially to note: "Updating folks here that the investigation is continuing and we've added this to the Trello for transparency. We'll update that card as more details become available. Cheers for your reports!"

The official Respawn account on X (formerly Twitter) also posted on August 23rd that a number of bans were issued on that day, but no word from either them or EA on X about the Linux bans so it's likely unrelated (unless more bans appear).

Hopefully sometime soon we can find out why it happened, and see the bans getting reversed. Since this is the second time it's happened, hopefully they will also make steps to prevent it happening to non-cheaters so I don't have to report on it for a third time.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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7 comments

Linux_Rocks Aug 24, 2023


I don't play, but this was BS and I feel for those who do play if they got banned for no reason.
rustybroomhandle Aug 24, 2023
After reading the original story, I tried to get banned by doing things like changing Proton version, adding reshade, changing driver versions, but nothing so far. I wonder what the exact conditions are that would trigger a false positive.


Last edited by rustybroomhandle on 24 August 2023 at 1:13 pm UTC
Julius Aug 24, 2023
Quoting: rustybroomhandleAfter reading the original story, I tried to get banned by doing things like changing Proton version, adding reshade, changing driver versions, but nothing so far. I wonder what the exact conditions are that would trigger a false positive.

Mango HUD or similar screen overlays maybe?
forkbomb9 Aug 24, 2023
Quoting: rustybroomhandleAfter reading the original story, I tried to get banned by doing things like changing Proton version, adding reshade, changing driver versions, but nothing so far. I wonder what the exact conditions are that would trigger a false positive.

Nobody has been banned recently, so maybe they already reverted the EAC changes.
Seems one common denominator was the servers lagging for some people. Maybe the servers thought the client was trying to DDoS
Can Aug 25, 2023
I just recently played some apex and I couldn't find a single player that had any recoil enabled. My old account was hacked and banned at some point so I don't know if I just got sent to the shadow realm of aimbot filled lobbies or what.
TheRiddick Aug 25, 2023
Lucky this is just a f2p game, nobody is technically loosing their license copy of the game but I do know some people like spending money on DLC and store items so that would suck loosing them.
anewson Aug 26, 2023
Quoting: CanI just recently played some apex and I couldn't find a single player that had any recoil enabled. My old account was hacked and banned at some point so I don't know if I just got sent to the shadow realm of aimbot filled lobbies or what.

when you spectate another player you don't see weapon recoil
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