Apex Legends 1.71 update patch notes: Arenas abandonment penalty, pride badges, more

Hamza Khalid
Apex Legends 1.71 update patch notes

The Apex Legends 1.71 update has finally fixed some of the issues in the Nintendo Switch version of the game and re-enabled Arenas leavers penalties. Here’s everything included in this new patch.

Respawn Entertainment often brings various updates to Apex Legends to make the game feel fresh. These tend to include new weapons, characters, and various bug fixes in the update patch notes.

The 1.71 update re-enables abandonment penalties for those who leave games early in Arenas. Respawn is also celebrating Pride Month by adding Pride badges that you can wear in the game.

Here’s everything in the update patch.

Apex Legends 1.71 update patch notes

Apex Legends Season 9 arenas

The Apex Legends update went live on June 3, 2021. This is a relatively small one, so there are no official patch notes for it. The developers have brought a few small additions to the battle royale.

The 1.71 update mainly focuses on fixing issues with the game’s Arenas mode and the Nintendo Switch console version of the battle royale. You can take a look at these changes in the tweet below.

Re-enabled Arenas abandonment penalty

The 3v3 Arenas mode was one of the most notable additions in the Legacy update, but there was an exploit that kept players that abandoned games from losing their win streaks, much to the chagrin of other players.

Respawn responded to this by introducing an abandonment penalty similar to the one “applied in Ranked BR games.” However, this was also applying to players that were accidentally disconnected from games due to a bug.

This came to the attention of the developers, who then made a few changes to the penalty system before re-enabling it in the 1.71 update. Now, leaver penalties can take up to 24 hours to activate.

Pride badges for players

Respawn Entertainment has decided to celebrate Pride Month with this new update by providing players with a neat-looking Pride badge. This will be available to you the next time you log in to the game.

Quite a few of the Legends are from the LGBT community. This includes Gibraltar, Loba, Bloodhound, Mirage, and Valkyrie.

So, this login reward has is a nice little addition that has been mostly well-received by Apex Legends players. Respawn also showed off a Bangalore banner with this badge on Twitter.

Pride badge and Bangalore banner in Apex Legends

Voice chat fix for Apex Legends on the Nintendo Switch

Two years after its subsequent release, Apex Legends finally made its debut on Nintendo’s dual-function system near the start of Season 9. However, it had a messy launch, with players labelling it as “unplayable” due to performance issues.

Some of the most prevalent issues on Nintendo Switch consoles were with the voice chat. Fortunately, the developers have issued a fix for this in the latest update, and this problem won’t persist from this point onwards.

Apex Legends on the Nintendo Switch

That covers everything that’s included in the 1.71 Apex Legends update. Hopefully, these changes will provide a more pleasant experience for players in the 3v3 Arenas mode, as well as to Switch users.

For more on Apex Legends, check out the best team comps for Ranked in Season 9 Legacy, and stay tuned to Charlie INTEL!

Image credits: Respawn Entertainment

About The Author

Hamza is a Content Creator & Publisher at Charlie INTEL, who graduated from Bahria University with a Bachelors degree in Business Administration. He's spent the past few years covering news and guides for various video games, including Call of Duty and Apex Legends. He loves digital art, movies, and comic books. You can contact Hamza at [email protected].