Apex Legends Principal Animator harassed over server issues, quits social media

If you haven’t already heard, Respawn suffered a massive cyberattack earlier this week after hackers crashed their way into the Apex Legends game. Rather than using exploits to win ranked lobby games, the hackers outright disabled matchmaking for everybody and placed messages in the game urging players to “Save Titanfall”.

Respawn developers eventually managed to resolve the issue and resumed regular functionality and matchmaking in the game. Unfortunately, however, some developers were targeted on social media by toxic fans and subjected to massive backlash and harassment. This included Principal Animator, Moy Parra, who later quit social media altogether.

Apex Legends animator harassed by toxic fans

Understandably, fans were upset when global matchmaking was affected by the hack. This also swiftly spurred the #SaveApexRanked hashtag that trended on Twitter. Nobody could find games and Respawn were, for a while at least, down on their knees. Some developers were at the brunt of the massive public outcry and some “fans” even proceeded to harass the devs online.

Moy Parra was especially targeted by the abuse and subsequently tweeted that he was quitting social media for the time being. “Taking a vacation from Twitter for the first time ever y’all take care”, he said. We also definitely don’t blame him, some of the comments were absolutely disgusting and we won’t be sharing them here.

🔥🔥🔥 Taking a vacation from Twitter for the first time ever 🧳 y'all take care! 👋 pic.twitter.com/4MfFFGjLjc

— Moy Parra 🎮 (@_moyparra) July 4, 2021

One Redditor commented that it was a shame “because it’s painfully obvious how much Moy loves interacting with the community” and we agree. It’s also disconcerting to think that individuals would stoop so low as to abuse the very creators of their favourite game. Calling these people “fans” is arguably a massive injustice to the real fans of the game.

Indeed, harassing the developers does not help to resolve the issue in the first place. This type of behaviour only illustrates the childishness of these Apex community members. The developers break their backs to bring us the amazing game titles we know and love. This is surely not the way we should be treating them when things go South.

We certainly hope that Moy and the rest of the team will forgive the proportionately small group of individuals for their abuse and will that they will not grossly label the entire Apex Legends as such.

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Make sure to check back with our dedicated Apex Legends section for more news and updates.

Header image via Respawn / Apex Legends.