Apex Legends update 1.71 brings back leaver penalties for Arenas

A new Apex Legends update today, version 1.71, has returned the leaver penalties for Arenas which were removed due to bugs.

When Arenas launched at the start of season 9, the new mode was somewhat ruined by players constantly leaving the match early, leaving teammates in 2v3 or 1v3 situations.

In an effort to stop this, Respawn implemented a leaver penalty, which gives players who leave early a matchmaking cooldown, typically for 10 minutes.

Although this certainly worked to discourage quitters, it was quite buggy in its first iteration, and was giving players penalties for leaving after the game had finished.

Respawn quickly took action by removing penalties altogether while they could fix the issues.

On June 3, one week after the penalties were removed, the feature has been reinstated in Apex Legends – meaning leaving an Arenas match early will result in a matchmaking cooldown.

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Hopefully, this time around, it won’t punish players simply leaving the match after it’s already finished.

Respawn’s director of comms, Ryan Rigney, said that the team was hopeful that they had resolved the bugs this time around.

Apex Legends 1.71 patch notes

As this is such a small patch, there are only three changes noted by Respawn:

• Re-enabled leaver penalties for Arenas
• Fixed some voice chat issues on Switch
• Grants all players the #Pride badge!

This includes the Pride Month badge, which is a login reward for all players.