Titanfall Multiplayer Servers Hit By Hackers

Respawn Entertainment’s first-person shooter Titanfall 2 is nearly five years old, but a free-to-play weekend on Steam at the beginning of May demonstrated that the title still has an active fan base. Over those few days, according to Steam Charts, the game reached a peak of nearly 28,000 concurrent players.

Unfortunately, not everybody wants to see Titanfall 2 or any other game developed by Respawn Entertainment experience success, and one presumed former player has been actively hacking Respawn’s multiplayer servers for years. Both Titanfall 1 and 2 as well as Apex Legends have experienced DDOS attacks in the past, as recently as April, that have made it impossible for people to log in and play the games.

Currently, Titanfall’s PC servers are down, according to publisher EA’s server status page, although the Xbox One servers are up and running. But a Twitter account that reports on Apex Legends news, TitanfallBlog, has reported that the hacker is also targeting the servers for Titanfall 2, so far unsuccessfully. And the developer’s other successful multiplayer shooter Apex Legends is rumored to be under attack, as well.

Nobody is quite sure of the name of the attacker, but most players seem to believe that it is a single person who feels wronged by Respawn for some reason. Some people have attributed the hacks to a disgruntled player called Tufi, who was caught cheating in Apex Legends and subsequently had legal issues with EA.

Others have with some assuredness attributed at least the Titanfall attacks to a hacker called Jeanue, who has gone by multiple names on Origin, the digital storefront used to purchase and play EA-published games. For years, this attacker apparently has used two exploits to impact the games’ servers. The first causes a buffer overflow and makes users crash out of the game; the second causes the server to kick players.

Although Xbox One servers are currently up, the hacker is apparently targeting Titanfall console servers, as well. Some players have reported getting blacklisted from the game on Xbox and being unable to log in. A few have even claimed to have been hit by the hack on more than one platform.

Whoever the hacker is or their motivations, it’s certain that the team at Respawn have been hard at work to amend the problems as quickly as possible. They successfully circumvented the DDOS attacks in April, have found fixes for some of the exploits employed by the hacker known as Jeanue, and are aware of and working on the new wave of DDOS attacks currently affecting the Titanfall servers.

Each time Respawn Entertainment gives more backstory to the Apex Legends universe, it seems to connect even deeper with their past series Titanfall. With the introduction of the newest Legend, Valkyrie, Apex Legends is starting to feel like a full-on Titanfall sequel.

While there have certainly been references to Titanfall in previous pieces of lore, there hasn't been anything as concrete and overt as the most recent "Stories from the Outlands." Based on comics, animations and in-game items, there's plenty of connections between the two games. This includes facts like Wraith being a former titan pilot, Pathfinder being a MRVN unit, Bangalore fighting for the IMC, and more. With Valkyrie, those connections are reinforced now more than ever.