The latest update to hit Apex Legends added a new leaver penalty system to punish players that left in the middle of Arena games. Leaving during a full game meant you receive a similar penalty to leaving a Ranked Battle Royale Game, and a warning would pop up if a player tried to leave before the match was over.
Just a few days later, however, Respawn has disabled the Arena leaver penalty system for tossing out unfair punishments in various scenarios. Chief among them was penalizing players for leaving matches that weren’t actually full.
As you can see in Reddit user PanzerMassX’s video, even though they left the match in a 1v3 scenario, the penalty system still kicked in and issued a 10-minute matchmaking penalty. The game should try to fill those empty slots right up until the start of the first round, but players are saying that if you leave before the first round starts for any reason–even if you don’t have any teammates–the penalty system will issue a punishment.
The penalty system would even activate if a player left an Arena match too soon. Reddit user W00S’s video shows that leaving the match summary screen too quickly will also activate a leaver penalty for no apparent reason.
An unintended consequence of the leaver system is a new problem where players simply go AFK instead of leaving the match. This had led to Apex players asking for a surrender option to bypass the leaver penalty system just to get unfair matches to end early. Players can already report AFK teammates, but there’s no option to kick AFKers from the match.
Respawn reported on Twitter this morning that they’ve “temporarily disabled leaver penalties” and will issue a fix “later this week.” No word on what this fix will look like, but at least quick action was taken on this one.
