The July 4 weekend is a cause for celebration for most American companies, including Respawn Entertainment. However, instead of getting some time off and running some kind of in-game event, the studio found itself pulling overtime to fix problems caused by an errant hacker with noble intentions.

Operation Red Tape is no more - for now

The hacker decided to launch Operation Red Tape as if to take advantage of the holiday weekend. The said campaign isn't malicious, by any means. In fact, it's actually quite noble. All it aims to do is to bring awareness to the abysmal state that Respawn Entertainment's previous title, Titanfall, currently finds itself in on the PC.

While the Titanfall games continue to draw in their fair share of players, especially after the most recent Apex Legends updates that introduced elements from the Titanfall games into the battle royale shooter, playing Titanfall on the PC has been anything but smooth sailing.

The original Titanfall, in particular, has been flooded with DDoS attacks and hackers since it arrived on Steam.

All the hacker was trying to do was to raise awareness for this and it seems like they has accomplished the job. More people know about this now. The only problem? Respawn Entertainment hasn't done anything about it yet.

In an earlier article, we covered how the ingenious hacker used the "Important Message" display at the end of each Apex Legends round to link to a website that the hacker has put up to raise awareness about how Respawn has continuously ignored fixing Titanfall on the PC.

The hacker goes on to add that Respawn Entertainment shouldn't continue selling Titanfall on the PC in its current state.

The hack itself wasn't malicious. Gamers could still proceed as usual in Apex Legends. The only difference is the aforementioned "Important Message" display that now contained new phrasing. However, it didn't take long for Respawn to spring into action and provide a fix for the ongoing Apex Legends problem.

For a couple of hours, Respawn Entertainment went to work to fix Apex Legends and bring it back to its pre-hack state. While this should have been a cause for celebration, audiences and the hacker probably aren't too happy with the result. After all, Respawn Entertainment didn't even address Titanfall at all in its Tweet.

We’ve confirmed that matchmaking has been restored. We’re keeping an eye on things but believe the issue to be resolved.

Thanks for your patience, Legends.

— Respawn (@Respawn) July 5, 2021

Respawn Entertainment's work on Apex Legends has been commendable. The game first launched back in 2019 and quickly took over PUBG's former spot as Fortnite's biggest rival. Even though Respawn doesn't put out content as often as Epic Games for its battle royale shooter, it has made an effort to keep Apex Legends fresh at all times.

Unfortunately, as steady as the stream of new features that are coming to Apex Legends is, it's also been a frequent target of cheating and DDoS attacks. Although it's not quite unplayable, it has caused a problem for a lot of players.

If it's any consolation, Respawn has been transparent about all of this. It even announced that it had hired people specifically just to ban confirmed cheaters, as well as develop better tools to put an end to DDoS attacks.

TLDR; Respawn Entertainment is okay now. Titanfall is still not.