Let me tell you my story. I was among the very first wave of players to dive into Apex Legends. It all started with the Battlefield franchise, which I fell in love with on the EA platform, so when Apex finally launched, I jumped in without a second thought. Long before ranked mode even existed, I was already utterly hooked. When ranked finally dropped, I hit Gold in Season 2. That’s when I decided to commit fully to getting better at Apex.
I made a fresh EA account dedicated solely to Apex. I drilled my aim and movement relentlessly, day in and day out. By the time I was in university, all that hard work paid off—I finally climbed to Master rank. But the good times were not to last.
Tragedy struck at the beginning of my third year, when I left my laptop at home. My account was stolen, and the hacker loaded it up with cheats. All my usual logins were from Zhejiang, China, but the hacker accessed it from Beijing, China. My birthday is September 23rd, and that exact day, an email from EA landed in my inbox: my account had been permanently banned. Safe to say, that was the worst birthday present I’ve ever received.
I didn’t even realize the full extent of what had happened until I tried to log back in during the National Day holiday. I tried everything I could think of: I reached out to the TOS team, filed ticket after ticket with EA support. Their response was always the same: my account had been flagged for cheating. They said they were "sorry" my account had been compromised, but made it crystal clear that the ban was non-negotiable—whoever used the cheats didn’t matter, the account itself was tainted. I sent them screenshots showing the suspicious Beijing login against my consistent Zhejiang history. They didn’t care.
It wasn’t their account. It wasn’t the one they’d poured more than 2,000 hours into. It wasn’t the one they’d spent thousands of yuan on.
I had nowhere left to turn. I didn’t cheat. But I was the one who had to pay the price. Friends doubted me. I couldn’t play the game I loved. Those days three years ago were some of the darkest of my life.
Now, I’ve finally made peace with it. There’s nothing I can do to get that account back. So I’m starting over. I still love Apex with all my heart, but that old account was where it all began. It held every bit of my youth, every late night grinding, every win and loss—and yes, all the money I’d spent too.
I’m sharing this story to remind everyone: protect your accounts. Cherish what you have. And I hope Apex only gets better from here. This is my way of closing this chapter of my life.
