After a group of hackers hijacked Apex Legends‘ playlists, Respawn devs have spoken out and snapped back at the hackers, saying their efforts “achieved nothing of value”.
After Respawn’s battle royale Apex Legends was the victim of a massive hack drawing attention to Titanfall hacking over the US holiday weekend, one of the studio’s developers has revealed that the attack achieved nothing – and just made the team work unnecessary overtime.
Respawn’s communications lead Ryan K. Rigney noted on Twitter: “I was holding my newborn nephew when I found out about the Apex hack. Had to hand him back, go work, and miss out on a day with family.”
“Also: Sunday’s attack was tied to an awareness campaign that we’ve already publicly acknowledged… The problem’s not awareness. It’s that DDoSing in particular is just a hard problem to solve. Really hard,” he continued.
“The team has never stopped working on DDoS solutions, and anti-cheat is just a never-ending war of whack-a-mole. On the DDoS front, we WILL solve this. When we do, I promise you it won’t be because hackers ‘made us aware’ by ruining a holiday. They achieved nothing of value.”
There’s a clear amount of frustration in his words – and why not? Being strongarmed into coming into work on a problem that has no clear and immediate solution isn’t ideal in any job you’re in. The delay of the fix for Respawn’s Titanfall games has some complicated reasons behind it, and it’s something the studio has addressed before.
Of course, a cursory look at the replies to any of Ringley’s tweets are less than sympathetic. Here’s hoping this sort of attack won’t ruin things for the developers – and people that just want to play the game! – again.