Apex Legends cheaters are back. If your ranked games haven’t been plagued by aimbotters or wallhackers, count yourself lucky. Respawn’s battle royale has anti-cheat and a couple of devs working tirelessly to ban cheaters, but as with most online games, it’s never enough. Cheaters find new loopholes and ways around anti-cheat systems, and a handful of employees will never be enough to ban everyone.
The most recent hack appears to be using Apex’s pistols akimbo - that is, dual-wielding them for double the firepower. If you think that doesn’t sound too bad, push those P2020s out of your head and think more Wingmans (Wingmen?). That’s 45-damage shots coming at you twice as fast (97 for a headshot, but despite their cheats, these hackers can’t seem to aim), giving the Wingman a DPS of 234. For context, that’s - without any headshots - knocking someone with red armour in a second. That’s a higher DPS than any other weapon, including the recently Care Packaged Volt SMG.
I want to be very clear: cheaters have no place in this game and I hope they are all swiftly banned. However, wielding pistols akimbo is objectively cool, and Respawn should add it to the game for real.
My love for akimbo pistols likely stems from Modern Warfare 2. In hundreds of hours poured into multiplayer, my favourite moments were often when I used the Akimbo attachment. Twin Desert Eagles one-shotting opponents, two Mini-Uzis spraying rounds with abandon, and - my favourite option before it was nerfed to oblivion - two Model 1887 shotguns blasting through anything and anyone silly enough to get in my way.
I don’t have to go much further, most of us were there. Whether you were sniping from the rooftops, camping in a corner, or (like me) rushing with two weapons drawn, it was great fun. And I want that for Apex Legends.
I’m not saying Apex Legends isn’t fun; I wouldn’t have hundreds of hours in the game if it wasn’t. But its weapons fall into distinct categories and rarely stray from them. Think of the last two weapons added to the game: the CAR and the Rampage. They’ve each got a gimmick, but they’re just another SMG and LMG respectively. The CAR functions largely the same as an R-99, and the Rampage as the Spitfire. The weapon added before that, the Bocek Bow, was entirely new and different: you don’t reload, you can pick up spent ammo, it is basically silent, the list goes on. Before that, the 30-30 is a gimmicked G7, the Volt is a standard SMG, the Sentinel is a sniper with a gimmick, and we have to go all the way back to the Charge Rifle in Season 3 for another entirely new weapon.
I’m vastly underselling most of these weapons - the Volt in particular is a personal favourite - as they are all subtly different to their counterparts by way of differing ammunition, damage, rate of fire, or even the skins - the Volt also wins here, no questions asked. These subtle differences shape how useful a weapon is, how it feels, and how it shapes the meta. But broadly speaking, other than in the first three seasons, the Bocek is the only post-launch weapon that has really changed the game. Not because it’s overpowered or broken, but because it is different.
Rampart’s modded weapons change things up a little, but there’s room for more. There’s room for akimbo pistols. Not the Wingman, no, but other pistols perhaps? Instead of Hammerpoint Rounds, could we dual-wield these with a nerf to their accuracy? Whenever I land, I seem to find an abundance of P2020s and little else. Let me wield two of them!
I’m no developer, but I still understand there will be balancing issues with this. I’m not convinced it’s even possible with the current weapons, but a tweak or removal of some hop-ups could make it work, or appropriate nerfs to hip-fire accuracy or reload speeds. If it doesn’t work with the current pistols, why not make a new one for Season 13? A pistol created specifically to be dual-wielded and has been balanced as such.
Cheaters need to be scourged from our servers, but they get one thing right: wielding pistols akimbo is a hell of a lot of fun. There just needs to be a level playing field when we’re doing so.