Why 'Apex Legends' Needs The Leaver Penalty System

“Apex Legends” allows players to willingly leave the game whenever they want during a match. While a seemingly harmless act, it’s actually one of the problems that prevents its community from growing into a solid team-based game. Here’s why “Apex Legends” needs to implement its leaver penalty system.

The recent updates in “Apex Legends” had included the leaver penalty system, but this was also quickly disabled. The implemented leaver penalty system would soft-ban players who would leave games for three games straight. While players can easily take note of this feature, players would not easily leave games unless they get marked by the system itself.

The difficulty of leaving comes with the player’s reaction toward dying in-game. When playing with strangers, most are compelled to leave once they’ve been incapacitated and finished off when their teammates are far away.

Once the person leaves, their teammates are left behind to fight for the rest of the match with a disadvantage. This behavior defeats one of the features that this battle royale game has: teammate respawning.

“Apex Legends” was the first of the battle royale games to introduce a respawn system where fallen allies could return to battle if they’re transported to certain areas. While returning players come in with no items with them, this is still an advantage as it allows teams to fully recover from fights where they’ve lost heavily.

This dynamic allows teams to keep on fighting as there would be an opportunity to get their friends back. However, this feature cannot be availed if teammates leave the game prematurely.

Since the leaver penalty has been pulled out, players can leave without any repercussions. This could possibly instill a negative behavior of leaving people behind. Respawn Entertainment needs to fix this soon or players may start calling out each other on public platforms.

As of now, “Apex Legends” is a few weeks into its Season 1 of content. The new season introduces new content such as cosmetics, loot and characters.

Many are still waiting for the new guns and characters which are expected to be released in the middle or the end of the season.