Apex Legends devs disable leaver penalty in Arenas due to “inappropriate punishments”
Although the new leaver penalty was only just introduced in Arenas, the Apex Legends devs have decided to temporarily disable the system due to an issue.
As well as fixing the Wattson fence bug and some other smaller issues, Respawn Entertainment pushed an update on May 24 that introduced a leaver penalty for Arenas, a system that players had been desperately asking for.
Although this was met by positive reactions from fans, the penalty system had some issues that caused some players to receive punishments when they had done no wrong, causing the devs to temporarily disable it.
Players have been enjoying the new season, getting to know the new Legend, Valkyrie, as well as the intense 3v3 mode, Arenas.
These new additions to Apex Legends haven’t come without their issues though, as not only have the devs confirmed some changes to Valkyrie’s VTOL Jetpack, they have now also had to disable the recently introduced leaver penalty in Arenas.
Apex Legends Arenas leaver penalty
The new leaver penalty was issued to punish those players who decided to leave games early and leave teammates in the dust. This ultimately left people extremely frustrated that players could just leave without any repercussions and in some cases even protect their win streak.
So, to counteract this issue, Respawn ordered a leaver penalty that would prevent players from playing any mode for a total of 10 minutes.
Players are warned before leaving so they know what they are getting into, and the penalty is only given to those who leave the match while the full squad remains.
The idea is that players who have had a teammate abandon the match could also leave without a penalty so long as that player isn’t in their party.
This meant those players would not be punished for leaving and would also not receive a loss on their record.
However, it seems this system was not working as intended, as players who would leave after a teammate had already abandoned the match were also receiving leaver penalties.
In response to this issue, Respawn decided to “temporarily” disable the leaver penalty system with a fix to come “later this week.”
Respawn dev Ryan Rigney also touched on the subject, stating “This problem had to do with game logic after everyone on the opposing Arenas team left the match. Basically you’d sometimes still get a leaver penalty after leaving the empty game.”
For those wondering how this passed playtesting, well Ryan clears that up by saying this issue “never showed up in playtesting,” but should be a pretty quick fix.
That’s all on the latest Arenas news for Apex Legends, for more stay tuned on Charlie INTEL and check out our recent article on players calling for changes to “broken” SBMM.
Image Credits: Respawn Entertainment