A sweeping community investigation has claimed the recent Apex Legends “SaveTitanfall” hack was part of an elaborate scheme to revive a cancelled Titanfall spin-off.
On 4th July, Apex Legends on PC was hacked to display the URL “savetitanfall.com”, with the subheader, “[Titanfall 1] is being attacked so is Apex.”
Players also received an “important message” at the end of each match that requested they “visit and repost savetitanfall.com”.
Apex Legends: Emergence Gameplay Trailer Watch on YouTube
This came after developer Respawn’s Titanfall games experienced DDoS attacks in May. The attacks became so severe, Titanfall 2 streamers said they were being “blacklisted” by a hacker so their games were automatically hit when they joined, making their main accounts unusable.
The original Titanfall has experienced multiplayer issues on PC for several years, and it was only in April that Respawn publicly announced it would properly address the problems.
The attacks have often been attributed to a mysterious and mythical figure called “Jeanue”, who some believed was behind the latest wave. But exactly who carried out the attacks was unclear.
Let’s Play Titanfall 2 – Late to the Party Watch on YouTube
In April, I spoke with “RedShield”, founder of the TF Remnant Fleet community – at the time one of the last and largest Titanfall 1 communities left – to find out what was going on with Titanfall.
RedShield called on Respawn to provide community-run servers to help get Titanfall back in business.
“We have many extremely passionate members in this community who are very talented programmers and coders,” RedShield told me.
“They have in-depth knowledge and experience with the Source engine and the way Titanfall’s files work. We have people who would, in a heartbeat, spend money – I ask that Respawn solves the issue permanently by giving us access and control over the Titanfall 1 servers, with permission to moderate, to ban users, and, if I can be so bold, to even mod the game. (Perhaps, just one server…?) Respawn has expressed interest in the idea in the past, and of all the solutions to the exploits problem and the player-retention problems we’ve come up with, community-run servers is the strongest.”
Now, the Titanfall community is in uproar after RedShield and a handful of associates were accused of being behind the hacks in a bid to revive the cancelled Titanfall Online.
The SaveTitanfall website has now published a 40-page pdf that includes hundreds of images of online messages and screenshots that paint a troubling picture of misdirection. RedShield, alongside Remnant Fleet administrator p0358 – who was held up as a “saviour” after publishing a Medium article dubbed “How to fix Titanfall” in late July – and Remnant Fleet members DogeCore and MrSteyk are namechecked as plotting to hack Respawn’s shooters.