Apex Legends is experiencing "roughly three times the normal rate of disconnect errors" right now

Players jumping into Apex Legends over the weekend may have experienced more servers disconnections than usual.

That's because of an unspecified ongoing issue that developer Respawn says is resulting in "roughly three times the normal rate of disconnect errors" that seemingly can't be rectified without deploying a patch to players.

On Thursday, a tweet on the official Apex Legends Twitter account said: "We're ramping up our server capacity today and have some scheduled fixes for tomorrow," adding that it believed "some problems will require work through the weekend".

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The following day, Respawn had to acknowledge the issue was more complex than first expected, tweeting: "Despite improvements today, we're still seeing roughly three times the normal rate of disconnect errors in @PlayApex, and a full return to normal may take until our next planned patch on Sept 22."

It's bad timing for ranked players who are reporting losing points and ranks as a consequence of the disconnects. As an apology, Respawn says it will "extend the current ranked split by one week" to compensate for the lost time, and says it will deploy an update that's expected to "go live Monday".

Despite improvements today, we're still seeing roughly three times the normal rate of disconnect errors in @PlayApex, and a full return to normal may take until our next planned patch on Sept 22.We'll extend the current ranked split by one week—that update will go live Monday.September 17, 2021

Apex Legends' Ping system – a novel new way to encourage camaraderie and enable players to communicate without using voice chat – has been widely imitated, but now publisher EA has protected this technology with a patent. But rather than lock it down and prevent other studios from using similar communication systems, EA is making it available, for free, to other developers as part of a suite of accessibility-related patents.

"By sharing these accessibility patents, we hope to encourage and support other developers to do the same," Chris Bruzzo, EVP of Positive Play, commercial and marketing, said at the time. "While we have long been committed to breaking down barriers within our games, it’s clear that we cannot do this alone, nor should we. We need to work together as an industry. We hope developers will make the most of these patents by building similar features in their own video games that make them more inclusive."

Apex Legends recently banned over 2,000 players for "dashboarding" and abusing a matchmaking exploit that let high-level – or Predator – Legends take on less-experienced Bronze-level players in ranked play.