Apex Legends hackers wrestle control of characters from other players, but Respawn urges that it's under control

Decided to kick off your weekend with a couple of rounds of Apex Legends and a couple of cold brewskis? Well, if you ended up heading to bed early when your Ballistic lived up to his name by slamming every bullet you own into a cliff face without your involvement, don't go blaming the ol' liquid courage. Turns out someone has managed to find a way to "control the inputs of another player remotely," says Respawn Entertainment. While the studio says it was able to curb the issue within a few hours, it's never a good thing for the reputation of one of the best FPS games with a huge competitive following.

Late into the evening of January 9, 2026, Respawn Entertainment posted the following on X, letting players know that the Titanfall 2 developer is "working on a solution" to an issue that saw a "bad actor" remotely take direct control over another player in Apex Legends this week.

The full statement reads: "We are aware of an active security incident where a bad actor is able to control the inputs of another player remotely in Apex Legends. Based on our initial investigation, we have not identified evidence that suggests the bad actors can install or execute code as in the case of an RCE or injection attack. We are actively working on a solution and will update you when we have more information."

Now, Respawn has at least assured users that it doesn't appear to be an exploit that can lead to a nefarious agent running code on your machine. That's good. At the same time, however, the company states that it just hasn't found evidence to suggest the issue runs that deep. That's bad.

Rightly so, the response on X is… not great. There's the odd bit of praise for the swift transparency, but a lot of fair comments claim that more information is required. "We need a full technical breakdown once this is fixed so we know our PCs are actually safe," says one. With another spouting the damning claim that "Apex is a security risk to have installed at this point."

Deeper down, multiple users claim to be victims of the newly identified issue. Whether it's the same situation that has led to Respawn's investigation is hard to verify, but a post made to the Apex Legends Reddit a few hours before the statement does seem to line up with the same type of attack. You can also see another reported example from 'Juicyshmooves_' via X below.

January 9, 2026

In this case, Reddit user 'Low_Woodpecker_6329' outlines a situation in which his team was forcibly disconnected one by one, with the affected character continuing to play - seemingly being controlled by someone else. Once the allegedly hijacked character was killed, the string of events repeated itself with another team member. The name of the hijacked player's avatar was changed as well, suggesting someone basically inserted themselves into the team to replace the disconnected player.

While reconnecting did allow the original poster to regain control of their character, they found themselves in a different place than where they had disconnected, highlighting the fact that their character continued to be played in their absence. The other affected (and since defeated) teammates were able to rejoin the match as spectators, where they are said to have observed similar things happening to other players across the map.

Their claims were even corroborated by another user fanning the flames of the Reddit thread, who outlined their experience with a similar situation and adding that the hijacked players would sprint toward "a lvl 52 Bangalore" with a username ending in "tryingPC,"  which just so happens to be the same name suffix as the player that killed the poster's hijacked teammates. Do we have our Apex Legends serial killer in sight, or is this just a spooky coincidence? You be the judge!

Either way, it only took Respawn Entertainment six hours to claim that "this incident is now resolved," adding that "Anti-cheat is a constant cat-and-mouse game," without suggesting that the issue was big enough to put a player's whole system at risk of a cyber attack.

With yet another Apex Legends hack put to bed, the chance to blame my terrible Lifeline plays on the dubious actions of a rogue agent will have to wait for the next big Apex hijack. Honestly, they had no shields; it should have been safer to kill them than to revive you. That shot should have downed them. No, I'm serious! Just run next time.