Apex Legend player permanently banned by EA after typing 'stfu'

We have all experienced our fair share of rage when playing a shooter game. Whereas some people’s rage is limited to a swiftly worded message, others can go the whole hog and smash up their computers (for some reason). For one user, they landed somewhere in the middle and found themselves facing a permanent ban.

One Apex Legends player found themselves faced with a permanent ban recently after telling a fellow player to ‘stfu’. After posting the ban message to social media, a debate has been sparked surrounding Respawn Entertainment’s seemingly harsh harassment rules.

Check out some gameplay from Apex Legends below!

Posted to Reddit on 19 November, the Apex player in question shared the ban message which reads, “Hi. It looks like your EA account broke the rules in our Positive Play Charter. Your EA account is banned.” It continued with, “We consider this to be harassment. You can no longer play EA games on this account.”

The ban would not only prohibit the player from accessing Apex but would also not allow them access to the EA app, making every other EA game also unplayable.

If you think a permanent ban simply for typing ‘stfu’ was a bit too harsh, you would be right as people quickly discovered the user had been faced with multiple temporary bans in the past. Although the user, THEVAN3D, claims they have only ever faced one temporary ban, others are finding this hard to believe as Apex features a three-strike system.

“[I had a] previous account suspension for the same reason,” they said. “The account is clean. I never used cheats or did anything else. Just saying f**k a couple of times. And now I’m locked out of my account. not being able to access even single-player games.”

It is unclear if this is a mistake by Respawn or if this was the result of the three-strike system. Either way, Respawn has said breaching the “Positive Play Charter” can result in “restrictions to your account” or even “take away your access to certain or all EA Services.”

Moral of the story, keep the rage to a minimum.