The #1 ranked player in Apex Legend's new Ranked Arenas mode was banned on Wednesday for blatantly hacking their way to the top of the leaderboards. At the time of banning, the player, who goes by BunnyHunter70707 on PC, had a ranked score of over 29,500 points, a full 2,000 ranked points about the second-ranked player HaTeNaSkyWalker.  

As reported by YouTuber kauzey, the first VOD evidence of BunnyHunter's hacking came all the way back on August 6th, when Twitter user Fii____NA posted a video showing the hacker. That video lacked conclusive proof of hacking, but did reveal the name of the player who was suspected of cheating.

Further evidence emerged against BunnyHunter on Twitter on August 11th, with Shiba_0fficial posting a clip of him getting aimbotted by the cheater. That clip was retweeted on Wednesday by Velvetyyyy who tagged Hideouts, the Apex Security lead at Respawn. Hideouts saw that post and banned BunnyHunter, eventually replying "Banned" to the original Tweet.

The newest ban of a top player follows a wave of bans against many top-ranked Apex Predator players last month, who were punished for using an exploit to get into low-level bronze lobbies so they could more easily win. Players have also been using a known exploit to pad their Apex Arenas ranked numbers, though it remains unclear if Respawn considers this a violation of their rules or not. 

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While Apex Legends faces many of the same challenges seen in Warzone and other FPS titles in regards to cheating, what sets the title apart from these other shooters is how active Hideouts and the rest of the security team for Apex is in enforcing bans against cheating players. In this case, however, BunnyHunter was left to rule the Apex ranked leaderboard for nearly two weeks after initial evidence surfaced against him.

Nonetheless, it is good to know that, in Apex, cheating is unlikely to pay off in the end.