I have a confession: in 2026, I still flinch when I hear a Thermite Grenade sizzle in Apex Legends. Not because I am worried about area denial. No, I am worried that some sweat in a ranked lobby has just discovered a time machine and permanently charged a Rampage LMG again. The year is 2026, but the trauma is eternal.

If you were not around for the great charge-bug crisis, let me set the scene. Apex was already a bit of a mess. Winter Express, the game's best LTM, had vanished for another year or more. Cheaters were exploiting bugs everywhere you looked. Hackers had shut down practically all of the game's servers on multiple occasions. And the Sentinel and Rampage LMG were both misbehaving in ways that made me want to uninstall and take up competitive gardening.

Here is the short version. Both the Sentinel and the Rampage can be charged up, increasing their damage and rate of fire respectively. But bugs at the time allowed the Rampage to be permanently charged. One carefully placed Thermite Grenade turned a weapon I already thought was slightly too powerful into a pre-nerf Spitfire for the entire match. The Sentinel had the opposite problem, either automatically charging or failing to charge when you wanted it to. Imagine a sniper rifle with the emotional stability of a toddler. That was the Sentinel.

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry could pick up the Rampage and turn from a Gold IV player into Hardecki. The fun left Apex matches quicker than Gregg Wallace leaves his wives post-honeymoon. Players abused and exploited the bug in every ranked match in the hopes of climbing the leaderboard and inflating their egos. I cannot blame them entirely, because Respawn took its sweet time. But I can absolutely blame them for the sound. Hearing permanently charged LMGs in ranked was nearly as infuriating as dying in a few hits every game.

So what could the developers do? Twitch streamer Babynikki suggested that Respawn should start vaulting weapons, a practice which sees some weapons removed from the loot pool until they are fixed. Respawn developers had mentioned vaulting weapons in the past, but mostly when talking about the game's ever-increasing loot pool rather than as a short-term fix for bugged or exploitable items. The Sentinel was briefly removed back in Season 6 when a game-breaking bug was exploited to rapid fire the sniper. So the technology existed. The will, apparently, was on vacation.

At what point does a bugged and easily exploitable weapon become a vault-worthy problem? Does a player have to find an exploit where loading two Thermites gives it the rate of fire of an SMG? In tournament settings, players are simply told not to use the exploits or they will be disqualified. But will Respawn deliver similar comeuppance to those ruining ranked matches? If the developer is not going to fix the issue, it could at least ban those who abuse it for their own benefit and dissuade others from doing the same. A temporary vault plus a few bans would have sent a clearer message than another patch note that says we are investigating.

Looking back from 2026, the lesson is embarrassingly simple. Competitive modes live and die on trust. If broken weapons run rampant, players and influential streamers will drift to other games. Respawn eventually patched the charge bugs, but the delay was painful, and the memory lingers like a bad drop at Fragment. Major issues in the battle royale's premier competitive mode cannot be left to fester while everyone pretends a Thermite Grenade is a skill item.

So here is my 2026 advice to any developer who finds themselves with an unparalleled machine of death in their shooter: vault it, ban the exploiters, and save us from ourselves. I love Apex Legends. I want to keep loving it. But if I hear one more permanently charged Rampage, I am going to charge my own controller into the sun. And I will not be alone. 😤