
"Save Titanfall" was the agenda of the "Apex Legends" hackers as they redirected players to the SaveTitanFall website. Players affected by the hack were unable to queue for any game mode and Respawn rushed to get a patch out before the end of the day.
"Safe Titanfall" Hack
Vigilante hackers took over "Apex Legends" on July 4 to bring attention to a hacking problem in "Titanfall," Dexerto reports.
Breaking: It appears a hacker is taking over Apex playlists with a message about 'Saving Titanfall'. pic.twitter.com/XpMzfRNQZB
— Apex Legends News (@alphaINTEL) July 4, 2021
"Titanfall", and to some extent "Titanfall 2", has been afflicted by DDoS attacks. These attacks prevent anyone from playing the game, and it's been going on for over two years. Players are outraged at EA for selling Titanfall while it is still plagued with hackers, especially when the franchise is expected to provide EA with over $750 million in net bookings for next year, The Verge says. The "unplayable" game has had issues for close to three years with no fix available and no warning for buyers of the game to let them know of the issues. Respawn has tweeted in recent months, promising help is on the way, yet the problem still persists.
Respawn director of comms, Ryan Ringley, issued a frustrated tweet asking hackers to stop saying it takes "weeks of work required to address each new stupid thing."
Players affected by the hack are unable to queue for any other game mode.
— Apex Legends News (@alphaINTEL) July 4, 2021
The website accuses EA of "fraud" for selling Titanfall while it's "unplayable."
(Clip via @YungLucianOG) pic.twitter.com/4MqZi2UBh9
PCGames presumes the hackers chose to hack on July 4 is because it's both a Sunday and the US's Independence day, and so there may not be any Respawn employee that could fix the issue immediately. "Apex Legends" players started noticing the messages on Sunday Morning.
The playlist was updated, offering a "new mode available." The playlist itself was renamed to "SAVETITANFALL.COM | BRUH," Dexerto says. Players were unable to queue up in any of the game modes.
The website players were redirected to, SaveTitanfall.com, has put up an announement on their page that the website nor the Discord servers listed in the website were "in no way associated with the recent Apex Legends hack."
Let me make one thing absolutely clear: https://t.co/X6beg1t0j4 is not associated with the hack. We're just a team of nerds from the NoSkill server who wanted to speak up for our game. The hackers are using our website without our permission and we did not want this.
— SaveTitanfall (@save_titanfall) July 4, 2021
Respawn Fix and Patch Rollout
Respawn first responded to the incident on Twitter ours after the first few players noticed the messages. A simple "investigation" of the problem resulted in over seven hours of hard work to resolve.
The team is still working on a fix and testing solutions. We’ll keep these hourly updates coming.
— Respawn (@Respawn) July 4, 2021
Respawn updated its players on Twitter every hour on a thread and assured the players that the hack, while disruptive, did not put the personal information of platers at risk.
By hour four, Respawn was able to test a fix and by hour five, continued to validate the fix. They thanked their players for "hanging with us" and assures that the team remained hard at work to fix the problem.
We’re continuing to validate a fix.
— Respawn (@Respawn) July 5, 2021
Thanks for hanging with us—the team remains hard at work on this.
Reaching hour six, they were able to publish a server update to resolve the matchmaking issue and waits for the update to reach all servers which typically takes hours. And on hour seven, they finally confirmed that matchmaking has been restored. They're keeping an eye on things but the problem should have been patched up. They thanked their fans for their patience.
We’ve confirmed that matchmaking has been restored. We’re keeping an eye on things but believe the issue to be resolved.
— Respawn (@Respawn) July 5, 2021
Thanks for your patience, Legends.
Players on Twitter opened discussions on Titanfall's current situation, some pressuring the developer to finally fix it.