Respawn Entertainment’s Director of Communications Ryan Rigney shared a statement saying “Congratulations Titanfall hackers, you forced some developers to work on a Sunday” on Twitter.

“I was holding my newborn nephew when I found out about the Apex hack. I had to give him back, go to work and miss a day with my family,” he wrote in his tweet.

He added that the whole action was completely unnecessary, as Respawn has already publicly acknowledged Titanfall’s issues and is actively working to fix them. This endeavor, however, is no walk in the park, he said, and is taking quite a bit of time. “Anti-cheat is just a never-ending war,” Rigney said, emphasizing that hackers can’t claim success here.

Original post, July 5, 2021: Titanfall players were apparently so frustrated with hackers in their game that they resorted to a creative measure. In order to attract the attention of developer Respawn Entertainment, they attacked the studio’s currently most popular multiplayer with the same weapons.

Those who currently log into Apex Legends on PC will see, instead of the usual playlists, a URL to the page “savetitanfall.com” with the comment “[Titanfall 1] is under attack, so is Apex”. The statement is clear. If Respawn doesn’t take care of Titanfall, Apex Legends, the baby of the family, is also under attack.

But that’s not all, because at the end of each match, players are encouraged to visit the website “savetitanfall.com”. The site has been around since March 2021, and affected players can’t access other game modes, according to our English Eurogamer colleagues, which extremely limits their gaming experience. But that’s exactly what the attack is meant to trigger. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

“Titanfall is a cherished franchise by many, and hacking issues have increased,” reads a statement on the hackers’ website. “The Titanfall community has been begging Respawn to fix this problem for over three years, but to no avail. Today, the game is still being sold despite being completely unplayable. It’s time for us to speak up.”

“Titanfall 1 is currently unplayable on PC because hackers are using exploits that prevent players from playing the game,” it continues. “This problem has existed for years, and Respawn readily pretends they are unaware of the situation.”

The hackers explain that the community has already contacted Respawn in many different ways, but they “stop responding” as soon as issues with Titanfall 1 are raised. They insinuate that the developer is well aware of the game’s “unplayable” state through forum posts and reports to customer support. Nevertheless, it continues to be sold on Steam.

Apex Legends is not free of hackers either, despite the better maintenance of the game – quite the opposite. Especially in the rated matches, cheaters sneak in again and again, who want to cheat their way up the ladder with DDoS attacks. Only in March, two Apex Legends Predators were banned for this reason.

Still in 2019, Respawn banned over 16,000 cheaters – yes, we’re on that kind of scale here – and declared war on hackers and cheaters shortly after. This continues to this day.