In March, during a live stream, a hacker took over e-sports player Havoc's computer during a tournament of the popular shooter game Apex Legends. Players Genburten and ImperialHal posted clips of cheats being inserted into their games. Due to the hack, the organization Apex Legends Global Series had to shut down the North American Finals event that was set for March 17th.

This sole action put the danger of the multi-million-dollar business of E-sports. Just like any other actions in regular sports, for example deflate gate, the cork bat MLB scandal, or the stealing signs from the Houston Astros. This makes the sports lose credibility to the audience which makes a chain of events that could ruin it. 

The Origins of Apex Legends: Game Release and Development

Apex Legends is a free-to-play game from the game developer Respawn, released in February 2019 by Electronic Arts for all the major platforms, offering cross-play availability. In 2021, they released the new-gen version for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X consoles. Work on the game began around late 2016 with 115 developers, making it the studio's most labor-intensive project, though the project remained a secret right up until its launch.

Game Engine

The developer used the Source game engine that was originally developed by Valve and used in games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike: Source, and Half-Life 2. This game engine was released in October 2004 and was written in C++. It is known that game developer Respawn modified the Source game engine so much that it is considered a completely different software for their games Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends.

Gameplay and Game Modes

Apex Legends is set in the same universe as Titanfall with playable characters available. There are two available gameplay modes: "Battle Royale," where up to 20 three-person squads or 30 two-person duos land on an island and search for weapons and supplies before attempting to defeat all other players in combat, and "Arenas," where players form into three-player squads and fight against another squad in a 3v3 team deathmatch over a series of rounds to determine the winner of the match.

Ever since the release of free to play battle royal video games like Fortnite back in 2017 the genera have an exponential growth. Currently there are over 15 different games for players to choose from and it represents almost 7 billion dollars in earnings for the developers and publishers. 

Popularity

The game surpassed the 25 million player base by the end of the first week and currently has over 100 million players engaged, making it one of the most played games in history. Apex Legends, the free-to-play game released by Electronic Arts (EA) and Respawn Entertainment in 2019, has earned the company an eye-watering $3.4 billion since its launch. With this overwhelming popularity, Respawn saw the possibility of creating e-sports competitions.

Esports and the ESPN's EXP Program

ESPN started its EXP program to display e-sports events running alongside other ESPN-managed sporting events. The first such event was the EXP Pro-Am Apex Legends Exhibition, run on July 11, 2019, alongside the 2019 ESPY Awards. This event had a prize pool of $150,000 and took place from August 1 to 4, 2019, in X-Games Minneapolis. This only grew with time, with events having prize pools of over $2 million. With the popularity of all these e-sports Fanatics has created a special promo code for all the different competitions. 

Cheating Scandal

With countless cheat scandals in online video games, a developer of anti-cheat gaming software designed to safeguard and enhance the online gaming experience for gamers. The company's software engine helps in detecting and preventing in-game hacks and cheating in multiplayer PC games, enabling gaming companies to reduce hacking attempts, report fewer false positives, and have a healthy and enjoyable gaming community. With this software added to e-sports, players' thoughts of cheating were eased, but the March 17, 2024, scandal in the North American Finals brought it into the spotlight.

Counter-Strike Scandal

Owing to its enormous population, India is one of the biggest unexplored esports markets. Optic Gaming formed a Counterstrike: Global Offensive (CSGO) team in 2018 as a calculated attempt to gain a foothold in the Indian esports scene after realizing this potential. The players on the Optic India roster were: yb (Lukas Groning), haiVann (Vishal Sharma), Antidote (Sabyasachi Bose), Marzil (Agneya Koushik), and forsaken (Nikhil Kumawat).

"Forsaken was seen as a hidden gem, a player with a remarkable degree of skill," AFK Gaming esports entrepreneur Siddarth Nayyar said.

Still, there were misgivings among the esports worlds. "People were saying he seemed suspicious, but we lacked concrete evidence to remove him from the team," Antidote said.

Forsaken continued to be a useful asset despite these reservations. He was chosen because of his technical skill. Not only was he picked for his reflexes, but also for his strategic thinking," said OpTic operations partner Prashant Prabhakar.

But when Forsaken was discovered employing cheating by using his hack named ‘word.exe’ on his PC software that without increased his accuracy to inhumane levels during a live LAN event at the eXTREMELAND 2018 competition, a huge scandal sprang up. In addition to damaging the team's reputation, this episode brought attention to the difficulties facing India's developing esports market. The Indian player received a year band after this scandal. 

Dark Zero Biography

Dark Zero Esports is an American esports organization that was originally founded in 2018 by Zachary Matul a private equity investor. The team is currently based in Las Vegas, Nevada and compete in Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant divisions. Their current Apex Legends roster consists of the Ausie Noyan “Genburten” Ozkose, the other Ausie Rhys “Zer0” Perry, the American Nicholas “Sikezz” Odom and are being coached by the American Nicholas “ZZ” Plithides

The team's biggest win occurred in the second season of ALGS (Apex Legends Global Series) which was set in 2021-2022. The total prize pool for this competition was $5 million and the competition was set at the PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 7–10. 

Luminosity Biography

Luminosity is a Canadian based team that was founded in 2015 by Steve "Buyaka" Maida. It has teams competing in the divisions of: Call of Duty, Overwatch, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, Super Smash Bros., Fortnite, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Pokémon Unite and Brawl Stars. Their current Apex Legends roster consist of an all-American line up of Christopher “Sweetdreams” Sexton, Evan “Slayr” Ryals and Nicholas “Fuhhnq” Wall. 

What Occurred

In the match between Dark Zero and Luminosity, a cheat configuration window appeared on one of the players’ screens. His player gained the ability to see in-game foes through solid objects (“wallhacking”), which is a cardinal sin in competitive play, punishable by a long temporary ban or even for life. The organizational committee disqualified the player, and this team received a technical defeat.

Recurrence and Lack of Security Measures

The lack of rule changes or extra security measures on the rivals' computers by Apex Legends Global Series resulted in a recurrence of the incident, which enhanced aimbot and wallhack capability. Soon after, someone using Destroyer2009 took credit for the hack on social media, claiming to have taken advantage of a weakness that allowed remote code execution.

Aftermath 

"On Sunday, a few professional Apex Legends player accounts were hacked during an ALGS event," said the company on Twitter. "Game and player security are our highest priorities, which is why we paused the competition to address the issue immediately. Our teams have deployed the first of a layered series of updates to protect the Apex Legends player community and create a secure experience for everyone." The company pushed another security update a few days later, but the details were still lacking. "Today, we've added another update that is intended to further protect our players and ensure the competitive integrity of Apex Legends," said the company on X.

Future Precautions

To stop such occurrences, the organization is still working to improve security protocols. To preserve the integrity of competitive gaming, this scenario emphasizes the continual conflict between hackers and game makers and the necessity for ongoing vigilance and innovative security solutions.

5 Cybersecurity Measures for Gamers

1. Strong passwords are at least 12 characters long and include letters, numbers, and symbols. Ideally, your password is not recognizable as a word or phrase.
2. 2 Factor authentication or multi-factor authentication (MFA), includes biometrics security keys, or apps that send you unique, one-time codes when you want to log on to an account.
3. Make sure the software being used is up to date as they are set to fix bugs that may have vulnerabilities.
4. If a game requires a payment method try to use a credit card as they come with more consumer protections than debit cards and have a better chance of getting the funds back in case of fraud
5. Phishing is the practice of cybercriminals tricking players into opening infected files or clicking on dubious links by pretending to be cheats or hacks. So do not open any odd files from a dark figure promising these actions.