Apex Coins are the in-game currency of Apex Legends. They are only obtainable via real money transactions, but the newly discovered bug just might have implemented an exception to that rule.
The issue was revealed to the public on Sunday, December 1, when hagennn made a post in r/apexlegends which read: “My buddy just got disconnected from the server and randomly received 7,000 premium currency.”
In the post a picture showed an unknown account with 7,700 Apex Coins, suggesting the said account already had 700 coins prior to the bug awarding an additional 7,000.
My buddy just got disconnected from the server and randomly received 7,000 premium currency… from apexlegends
Some Redditors believed it was simply a visual bug, which is not uncommon with disconnects, but it was later revealed the bug had in fact gifted hagennn’s friend 7,000 coins, which he later spent on Apex packs.
The Reddit community quickly took notice of the generous bug and jumped at the opportunity to get all the details about what hagennn’s friend did to trigger it.
In the comment section, hagennn revealed his friend did not do anything out of the ordinary. He simply joined a lobby, got disconnected and logged in to be greeted by a generous amount of Apex Coins. While the Redditor at first claimed he had already tried and failed to replicate the feat, hagennn later revealed he also managed to activate the bug and collect 2,150 Apex Coins.
Other Apex Legends players have since verified the bug’s existence, meaning hagennn and his friend are not alone in this boat. Respawn Entertainment is yet to comment on the issue, but the Apex community is hard at work trying to decrypt the bug.
One theory claims the bug occurs when two accounts are logged into the same internet connection. That seems to be a recurring theme with players who have unlocked free Apex Coins, including hagennn and his friend.
It is said that being disconnected while using more than one account on the same network fools the game into mixing up the two accounts’ identities. Because of that, the in-game system notices one of the accounts is missing a certain amount of Apex Coins from previous purchases and awards them to the wrong player.
Since the bug was revealed, a multitude of Apex Legends players have reportedly seen the bug in action. Some claim to have received upwards to 75,000 coins, which equates to over US $700 if a player were to buy packs of 10,000 coins at $99.99 each.
This is not the first time players have reported a bug involving Apex Legends currency. A Reddit user who goes by the alias paintings1 created a post nine months ago in which he claimed he was randomly awarded 42,450 premium currency. While that post did not gain as much traction as the one made by hagennn last weekend, it does indicate the bug might have been in the game for a while.
It remains to be seen how Respawn will react once the company identifies and fixes the bug. Recouping coins from players that exploited the bug will be nearly impossible, while punishing players that took advantage of a developmental flaw would not go down well in the broader gaming community.
One thing is for sure: the Apex Coin bug is one of many that have plagued the third season of Apex Legends and possibly the most impactful fault to hit the game to date.