'Apex Legends' Leaver Penalty Gets Removed, Might Come Back Later

Apex Legends players briefly noticed a new anti-leaver feature that issued a penalty to players who left games frequently, though the penalty wasn't acknowledged in the patch that went out on the same day. Players found that leaving too many games in quick succession resulted in them being locked out of joining more matches for predetermined lengths of time. Respawn Entertainment took away the penalty and said it was a mistake that it was added in the update, but that doesn't mean it won't ever make a return.

The penalties were first noticed several days ago when the undocumented feature kept leavers out of games. Leaving games in Apex Legends isn't an uncommon decision at all since many players don't want to wait to be respawned, especially if they die right at the beginning of a match. It's an action people have become so accustomed to by now that it caught some off guard when they were penalized for leaving games.

After people asked Respawn why the change wasn't listed in the patch notes for the update that was already problematic on its own, the developer took to Reddit to explain what happened.

"So internally, we have been working on and testing this feature but it wasn't our intention or plan to have it go live with the update that went out today," Respawn said on Reddit. "There was a piece of script that was missing and caused the leaving match early penalty to be turned on when it shouldn't be. That's why it wasn't in the patch notes."

Reactions were mixed on the feature with some people saying that it was necessary to prevent people from abandoning teams. Others suggested that they shouldn't have to wait around for teammates that pick up a respawn banner but take their sweet time bringing the player back. Respawn said that it's still unclear when or if the feature will even return.

"We updated the script, tested with QA and it's now disabled for all platforms," Respawn continued. "We don't have an ETA for if or when this would come out for real. Apologies for the confusion."

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