Fresh-faced battle royale shooter Apex Legends is a hit, having already amassed well over 50 million players. But if we've learned anything about online games over the years, it's that big success inevitably heralds an endless parade of unscrupulous sorts, eager to ruin legitimate players' games - and Apex Legend is no exception. Developer Respawn has revealed that it's now banned over 770K very naughty players, and doesn't intend to stop anytime soon.

Respawn first declared war on cheaters back in March, a few short weeks after Apex Legends' hugely successful launch. At the time, it told the community that, "We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players", revealing that 355K players had already been banned on PC alone.

Although Respawn has remained understandably cagey about its anti-cheat measures, the ban hammer has continued doinking down, with recent reports suggesting that some cheaters have been issued with hardware ID bans. And now, we've a more up-to-date picture of Apex Legends' cheating problem, with Respawn announcing that it's meted out 770K player bans.

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"While we can't share details on what we're doing so as to not give a head's up to the cheat makers," it wrote in a new post on the Apex Legends subreddit, "what we can say is that we're attacking this from every angle, from improvements to detecting cheaters, bolstering resources and tools, to improving processes and other sneaky things to combat sellers and cheaters."

And its anti-cheat measures appear to be having the desired effect. Over 300K account creations have been blocked, 4,000 cheat seller accounts have been banned in the last 20 days, and Respawn says that the total number of matches on PC impacted by cheaters or spammers has has been reduced by over half in the last month.

"We take cheating in Apex incredibly seriously and have a large amount of resources tackling it from a variety of angles," the developer told the community, "It is a constant war with the cheat makers that we will continue to fight."