Over the past day, scary rumors began to circulate that Titanfall 2 had been “compromised,” leading some to uninstall their copies as a precaution, but developer Respawn Entertainment insists players are in no danger. Originating on Discord, the rumor was Titanfall 2 had been exploited to “allow local code execution from the server” – in other words, nefarious hackers could install malicious software on your system through the game. It sounded a bit far-fetched, and it turns out there was a good reason for that.

　　Respawn has responded on Twitter, and apparently, this is a case of a garden variety exploit being used to crash people’s games. Annoying certainly, but not dangerous…

　　We are aware of reports of a security vulnerability affecting Titanfall 2 and are investigating. We have no other information to share at the moment but will update once we do.

　　— Respawn (@Respawn) September 8, 2021

　　An Update: We’re still investigating this issue but our engineers believe that we’re dealing with a simple exploit that can be used to crash games.

　　We do not believe there are any more serious risks to affected players or their machines.

　　We’ll update again as we learn more.

　　— Respawn (@Respawn) September 9, 2021

　　Unfortunately, Titanfall 2’s multiplayer remains largely unplayable because of this exploit, but there’s no need to uninstall, and you can play the single-player campaign if you wish.

　　So, why did this rumor spread anyways? Well, the Titanfall 2 community and Respawn have a, shall we say, contentious relationship. Certain fans accuse Respawn of neglecting the game (never mind that it’s nearly 5 years old at this point) and are willing to hurt the game and the rest of the community to make some sort of misguided point. And you wonder why Respawn seems somewhat reluctant to return to the franchise.

　　Titanfall 2 is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, and playable via backward compatibility on Xbox Series X/S and PS5.