Apex Legends Update Removes Broken Weapon to Fix Exploit

An Apex Legends update released this week has temporarily removed one weapon from the game due to an exploit that made it super powerful. That gun is the Sentinel sniper rifle, and the exploit allowed it to have a much higher rate of fire than intended. The update removed the weapon until the exploit can be resolved and also fixed an issue affecting one of the game's new limited-time modes that put players in a particularly disadvantageous spot when the match started.

The exploit, for those who didn't see it in-game or use it themselves, appears to have surfaced when the latest Apex Legends update dropped prior to Friday, the one that added cross-play and other features. It allowed the Sentinel weapon to fire shot after shot with hardly a break between them. Players joked that it'd been buffed to be fully automatic as evidenced in the video below that was posted on Reddit.

Oh man, the sentinel is fully automatic now from r/apexlegends

Though the Sentinel is indeed quite powerful, especially when it's charged up with shield-shattering power, it's gated by the bolt-action mechanic that limits its rate of fire. By bypassing that, players could get all the power with none of the setbacks. More and more players were figuring out how to replicate the exploit to unlock the weapon's full power, but as one Apex Legends designer pointed out in the comments of the Reddit post, the change was indeed an unintended bug and was being worked on.

Due to an exploit with the Sentinel Sniper Rifle, we've decided to disable it while we work out a fix. More info to come as we have it.

In the meantime, we have fixed an issue within Flashpoint that was causing the Ring to spawn on top of players at the start of the match.

— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) October 9, 2020

The other change made in the update fixed a problem with Flashpoint, the latest LTM that's been added to the game. Flashpoint removed healing items from Apex Legends in favor of unique zones that will heal players if they're inside them which is an interesting idea for a mode, but it becomes less fun when you start a match out by being damaged by the zone. That's what was happening in some instances, but that bug should now be resolved so that Flashpoint can be played as intended.

A release timeframe for the return of the Sentinel was not provided in the notes for the fix, but look for more updates from the game's social media accounts to know when the gun is back.