Let me start with a confession: I am not an Apex Predator. I am barely a Gold-tier menace with a bad habit of pushing fights I cannot win. But I do play Ranked. I respect the grind. So when I heard that 2,051 players got banned for using an infinite RP exploit back in Season 11, I felt a mix of anger, jealousy, and mild admiration for their audacity. Mostly anger. Okay, a little jealousy.

In case you missed it—or you have been living under a rock, which, fair, the rock probably has better matchmaking—the exploit worked like this. Opposing squads would team up in Ranked matches. Instead of fighting fair, they would use Replicators to craft Respawn Beacons. Then they would kill each other and respawn each other over and over. Every respawn fed them Ranked Points. It was a disgusting little RP printer. No skill. No gunfights. Just two squads farming each other like it was a friendship bracelet-making club.

And yes, some of them climbed to Predator. Let that sink in. They cheated their way to the top rank, probably flexed their dive trails, and then got yanked off the leaderboards. Respawn Entertainment noticed. The community screamed. And developer Conor “Hideouts” Ford dropped the ban hammer.

The numbers were beautiful. According to Hideouts, 2,051 accounts got banned. Here is the platform breakdown, because I love a good table almost as much as I love third-partying a fight I did not start.

The Switch number is my favorite. Twenty-two people on Nintendo Switch looked at this exploit and thought, “Yes, this is how I will achieve greatness.” On a console that runs Apex like it is thinking about a nap. Bold. Stupid. Iconic.

The ban durations varied from 7 to 60 days, depending on how much they abused the exploit. None of them were permanent at first. Hideouts warned that if they did it again, they would be permanently banned. His closing message was pure poetry: “GGs, play the game with some integrity next time.” I have been destroyed by a Wingman headshot from across the map, and that quote still hurt more.

Now, I know what you are thinking in 2026: “That was ages ago. Why are you still talking about it?” Because ranked integrity never stops being relevant. Apex Legends has changed a lot since Season 11. We have more legends, more maps, more balance updates, and more ways for my random teammate to solo-drop into Fragment and die in four seconds. But the temptation to cheat never really goes away. There is always some new exploit, some new bug, some new way to make the number go up without earning it.

I get it. Ranked is hard. Losing RP feels like losing a piece of your soul. You get teammates who loot for ten minutes and then die to the first squad they see. You get third-partied while healing. You get matched against three-stacks of Predators while your squad is a Mirage main, a Lifeline who forgot to heal, and a Wraith who disconnected. I have been there. I am there. I will probably be there tonight.

But here is the thing: cheating does not make you good. It makes you a coward with a shiny badge. If you farm infinite RP by killing your friends in a corner, you are not a Predator. You are a farmer. And not even a cool farmer. You are a farmer of fake points in a video game.

Respawn’s action back then sent a clear message. It may not have been a permanent ban wave, but it was a warning shot. And in 2026, with years of anti-cheat updates and community scrutiny, I would not want to test them. The ban hammer is heavier now. The players are angrier. The clips spread faster. You will get caught. And when you do, the internet will laugh at you.

So, what did we learn? Ranked Points should be earned, not printed. Respawn Beacons are for saving teammates, not for running a shady RP Ponzi scheme. And if you ever think about teaming in Ranked, remember Hideouts’ words: “GGs, play the game with some integrity next time.” I am going to go lose RP the honest way now. One bad drop at a time. 😎