Apex Legends stand by ban after LuLuLuvely reports “innocent” player

Alan Bernal

Respawn Entertainment have said they stand by a ban ruling that caused controversy in the Apex Legends community, after NRG streamer ‘LuLuLuvely’ reported a player who protested their innocence on Reddit.

After a hacker mowed down a team of streamers including Lulu, the NRG content creator immediately filed a report to Respawn’s security team member Conor ‘Hideouts’ Ford to sort the situation.

According to LuLuLuvely, her claim included a clip that clearly shows the enemy Gibraltar blatantly hacking. However, the person playing Bloodhound alongside Gibby was also ousted.

The Bloodhound, who initially disputed the decision under their Reddit account ‘KongoBoom,’ slammed Respawn and Hideouts for how the process was carried out and reaffirmed their innocence. Their post was titled “Killing streamers got me banned.”

The Bloodhound player in question claimed innocence, but Respawn’s investigation reaffirmed their ban.

“I’m season 6 / 3 predator with more than 30,000 kills you said I was cheating and in the video everything’s clear. The streamer gave my name mistakenly to the developer, in your email you said I was cheating without giving any proof,” they said.

This quickly set off the community. Accusations of a compromised system, favoritism to particular streamers, or lack of proper handling for bans were all brought up.

LuLu apologized to the player on Twitter, and said she would pass the thread along to get it attention. But, there was still anger about the supposed favoritism to address concerns of streamers, before regular players.

But after hours of community in-fighting and apparent “borderline death threats” toward LuLu, Respawn said they were standing by the decision.

“Regarding today’s Reddit thread from a banned Bloodhound (BH) player,” the studio wrote. “BH appeared to have multiple other banned accounts, BH has a history of attempting to evade bans, BH was partied with the cheating Gibraltar. We stand by the ban.”

Initially, KongoBoom expressed their frustration at the sequence of events. While the NRG streamer indicated that she had no intention of the Bloodhound being banned when making the report, the security team at Respawn have decided there was enough evidence to merit the verdict.

Following Respawn’s statement, LuLuLuvely said “Shame on those who sent borderline death threats to me because of a Reddit post from the guy claiming he was innocent.”

It should be noted that anyone can access the ‘Cheater Report’ Discord channel that’s handled by Hideouts, where people can directly submit clips and evidence of a hacker.

Uproar on this topic has devolved to speculation and accusations outside of Apex Legends and Respawn entirely, but the developers have now concluded this chapter of their long-standing battle against cheaters.

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About The Author

Alan is a former staff writer for Dexerto based in Southern California who covered esports, internet culture, and the broader games/streaming industry. He is a CSUF Alum with a B.A. in Journalism. He's reported on sports medicine, emerging technology, and local community issues. Got a tip or want to talk?