DEC 2025: ANTI-CHEAT DATA SHARE

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INTRO

Hi legends, welcome to our Anti-Cheat data share following Season 26! Our team is constantly dedicated to maintaining and improving competitive integrity in Apex Legends and this blog exists to provide additional transparency and share the ongoing work we're doing. This data share will not represent all of our team’s work as we are somewhat limited in what we can share as we do not want to tip off cheat-makers; there are always more initiatives happening behind the scenes. 

WHAT’S NEW

In Season 26, our Anti-Cheat team rolled out a new bot detection model. In collaboration with Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC), we also deployed a new detection that expands on Direct Memory Access (DMA) detections for various cheat vendors. We believe these two additions will help curb the account selling market as we make things more challenging for bad actors to buy pre-levelled accounts. This should lead to a decrease in cheaters found in-game and an increase to the overall health of our game.

Additionally, our team made strides in identifying and banning various compromised handheld consoles that were modded to run cheats.

Let’s dive into the data! Take a look at the line graph and the table below and then read on as we break down the information.

INFECTION RATES

Match Infection Rate (MIR) is the percentage of total matches that includes a cheater and it only takes one cheater in a match of 60 people to mark the match as “infected”. For more information about MIRs, please refer to our Anti-Cheat blog from last season.

Let’s look at the MIR on PC first. As you can see from the table above, Season 26’s launch had the lowest MIR since we began measurement at 5.8%. And, while we saw the typical increase during the Split, the S26 Split was still below others measured. 

On consoles, you will notice a slight uptick at the start of the most recent split. But when looking at the line graph, you’ll see that, despite the increase, the number is still quite low overall. We are also focused on improving our detection models to better identify unauthorized peripherals. This is critical to us as we drive towards continued positive impact on the console MIR, and an overall better experience for console players.

Overall, this is a metric where a lower number is always better and we’ll always be chasing further reduction.  We still have work to do to bring this number down as much as possible and will continue to communicate our progress. 

BANS

Our team continues to target cheaters with drive and dedication in each and every split. In Season 26 alone we banned over 92,000 accounts for a variety of reasons including botting, cheating or abusing exploits.

A quick note about our ban process: Typically, we issue a 24-hour ban as a quick, actionable way to remove a suspicious account from the ecosystem. The Anti-Cheat team then completes a thorough investigation and decides if a more serious (or permanent) ban is warranted. This is why sometimes problematic accounts seemingly only get a short-term ban initially; it’s often a temporary solution while the Anti-Cheat team completes their analysis. A more severe ban may follow, depending on the details.

REPORTS PER USER

We’re happy to share that Reports Per User on console in the most recent split are the lowest they’ve been in recent seasons! We are attributing this dip to improvements made to our detection models which have led to more efficient targeting of teaming and bots. Mid-season, we deployed our next-generation bot detection model and banned more than 1,000 accounts in the first 2 weeks. Typically we see an increase in RPU at the split, but because of reduction in bot reports we actually saw a decrease compared to season launch and the lowest split value since we began measurement. 

PROTECTING YOUR EA ACCOUNT

We've recently seen a few high-profile cases of compromised accounts. Our support team has been able to get these accounts back to their owners. As a reminder, there are a few steps you can take to protect your EA Account.

• Turn on two-factor authentication (follow the steps here)

• Never reuse passwords across different websites

• Be cautious about the information you share online

For more help, read our guide to keeping your EA Account safe.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

We remain dedicated to sharing Anti-Cheat information as frequently as we can with as much transparency as possible without showing our hand to cheat makers and bad actors. Thank you for reading and we’ll chat more about Anti-Cheat soon!

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