The Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) 2023–24 was announced in October 2023 and is currently in the regional finals. Everything was going smoothly so far in the esports tournament until the NA Pro League Split Finals on March 17.
The NA Split Finals would determine the 12 teams from North America that would progress to the ALGS’ Split 1 Playoffs in May 2024. However, it was disrupted by a major hacking incident that compromised the accounts of players, including Genburten.
Pro Players Hacked During the Live Apex Legends Global Series
According to the details shared, the players were hit with hacks in the middle of the matches, and the accounts of professional players Noyan “Genburten” Ozkose and Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen were hacked and given different cheats.
During the middle of the round, Noyan “Genburten” Ozkose was given a wallhack, and he found that he was able to see other players through the walls. A UI interface called “TSM HALAL HOOK” appeared on the player’s screen and also gave him an aimbot. He soon realized this and said, “I’m getting hacked. I’m getting hacked,” leaving the match right after.
Apex Legends pro Genburten had his account hacked in the middle of ALGS…. Never seen anything like this wtf pic.twitter.com/YNd8oCIm4z
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) March 18, 2024
Soon after this, a message was displayed in the lobby that read “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom,” which was the hackers announcing themselves. Immediately after, Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen suffered the same fate.
He realized that he had been given an aimbot when he fired at a target, but his bullets hit an unseen target, to which he stated, “I have aimbot, tell them I have aimbot!” The player tried to play through it but was banned, and soon the server was shut down by the admins.
This is the craziest thing that I’ve ever seen happen in Esports
— DylanDubs (@DylanDubs_) March 18, 2024
Fans and esports players are enraged at EA and how it was unable to stop this from happening. ImperialHal said that he has no idea how Respawn did not plan for something like this and why the anti-cheat was able to detect and ban him but not stop the actual hackers.
The NA Finals Have Been Postponed Following the Incident
After the servers were shut down for around 15 minutes, the ALGS team announced that the decision had been made to postpone the NA finals, citing “the competitive integrity of this series being compromised,” and added that it would share more information soon about when the finals will take place.
The Anti-Cheat Police Department has also issued a PSA and said that the players are advised against playing games “protected by EAC or any EA titles once they have fixed this or can comment” and has also urged players participating in the tournament to protect their personal information by changing passwords and performing a “clean OS reinstall as soon as possible.”
what type of security does a game have for this to be possible LMAO
— miss (@mislead) March 18, 2024
It is not yet clear how the hacks took place, whether it came from the game or the anti-cheat, but fans and players are less than happy and have been blasting EA and Respawn over the easy breach of servers during such a big tournament.
What are your thoughts about the ALGS hack? Let us know in the comment section below.
