When it comes to squad-based games like Apex Legends, it’s important to work together as a team in order to emerge victorious. After all, much of the game’s built around co-operation, be it the Ultimates that benefit the entire squad, using Smart Comms to communicate with others or reviving one another when the going gets tough and you find yourself facing a hail of bullets.
That’s why it’s always annoying when someone quits unexpectedly. To combat this, though, Respawn recently added in a penalty for those who leave before the end of a match. It was a welcome feature for most, but it also faced a fair amount of backlash and now, perhaps unexpectedly, the developer’s temporarily removed it from the game.
Over on Reddit, here’s what Respawn had to say about why it’s now gone, while also hinting that it could return later – though that’s not guaranteed.
“So internally, we have been working on and testing this feature but it wasn’t our intention or plan to have it go live with the update that went out today. There was a piece of script that was missing and caused the leaving match early penalty to be turned on when it shouldn’t be. That’s why it wasn’t in the patch notes.”
“We updated the script, tested with QA and it’s now disabled for all platforms,” Respawn continued. “We don’t have an ETA for if or when this would come out for real. Apologies for the confusion.”
Fair enough, but if you ask us, the leaver penalty really wasn’t that big of a deal in the first place. If nothing else, it at least provided an incentive for folks to work together and not quit out of a match early. Then again, some feel that being able to quit a game is important if you end up with someone on your team who just wants to grief their teammates by refusing to revive you after taking your banner. Or, you know, if they’re just acting like a total moron.
Tell us, though, what do you think of Apex Legends‘ leaver penalty? Do you want to see Respawn add it back in at some point? As always, be sure to give us your thoughts by dropping a comment down below.