Apex Legends is bringing back the Movement Nerf after fan backlash

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Summary

  • Apex Legends has brought back a controversial strafing change due to community feedback.

  • Respawn shared that the unintended consequences of the change from the mid-season update negatively affected movement mechanics.

  • The community praised the reversion, expressing appreciation for the preservation of skillful locomotion techniques.

After fan feedback, Apex Legends brought back the controversial change to crane strafing. The original nerf to the movement technique appeared during the massive mid-season update of Season 23 Apex Legends. Released on January 7th to coincide with the start of the Astral Anomaly event, this mid-season update introduced numerous balance changes to Legends and weapons.

While the patch brought significant changes to Legends such as Mirage and Loba in Apex Legendsone of the smaller notes in the “Bug Fixes” section disappointed a large part of the community. In particular, Respawn Entertainment added a “buffer” to the click, which made the ability less effective in the game. For context, step strafing is an advanced technique for moving in Apex Legends which players can use to quickly change directions in the air, making them harder to hit during fights. While the developer has made changes to “combat automated high-frame-rate movement technology,” many in the game's community believe things have gone too far.

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Apex Legends had some ups and downs throughout 2024, giving Respawn an incentive to innovate the shooter in 2025.

Fortunately, that seems to be Respawn's sentiment. After a backlash from the community, the developer announced that the previous push changes had been reversed. The post notes that the mid-season update change negatively affected the movement mechanics in the Apex Legends and recognized that the change had unintended consequences. According to Respawn, while it will continue to “fight automated workarounds and degenerate gameplay patterns” in Apex Legendswould appear to “retain” skills associated with some motor techniques such as tapping.

Apex Legends brings back the controversial Nerf to Tap-Strafing

Respawn's move to bring the nerf back to tapping was well received community. One of the things Apex Legends known for its movement. While the regular Battle Royale game mode doesn't involve wall-running in the same sense that its Titanfall predecessors, players can shoot incredible clips using a variety of movement techniques, including tap-streaking. On Twitter, many players responded positively to Respawn's move.

It will be interesting to see what impact this turn to top strafing has Apex Legends. It's unclear how many people have stopped playing the game in the past few days due to the initial nerf. Also, it's hard to tell if some of the lost players will return the changes.

It should be noted that a lot has happened in the battle royale recently. In addition to the extensive changes in the mid-season update, Apex Legends kicked off the Astral Anomaly event, bringing new cosmetics and a new version of the Launch Royale LTM. Respawn also noted that it appreciates player feedback on recent changes made to the game, so more updates to fix other issues may be coming in the coming weeks.

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