A cheating accusation was brought up against TSM and some other pro teams for data mining the exact endzones in tournaments.
Data mining has been a common thing in Apex Legends since the beginning. People have been doing this to learn about upcoming Apex Legends skins, Events, Heirlooms, Prestige skins, and more. EA has known this for a long-time without taking any action against data miners because it doesn’t harm anyone.
However, when it comes to data mining in the competitive scene to gain an advantage over other teams, things can become a little too controversial. A similar issue was brought up where many teams, including TSM, are accused of data mining the end zones in every tournament.
What does Datamining End Zones mean?
Data mining in Apex Legends means scrutinizing the game files to get confidential information that is not yet released or made public. As mentioned earlier, data miners in the community have been doing this for a long time to find out future Apex-related content.
Apart from these things, many people have figured out a way to get exclusive insights about Apex Legends’ end zones. These data tell you exactly where an Apex match will or will not end. This is a huge concern in a competitive game like Apex Legends, as players who have access to this information can already be at the end zone before anyone else.
TSM and Pro Teams are Under Fire Following the Datamining Accusations
A data miner named Shrugtal disclosed nine months ago about datamining endzones and shared specific pictures of invalid zones. Not many people in the Apex Legends community previously knew that these end zones could be data mined.
However, many pro players brought up this data mining issue recently. They accused other pro teams of doing it for a long time to gain a competitive advantage. Raven, an analyst and a coach who recently joined TSM, was the primary target brought under these allegations by pro players such as NRG SweetDreams, SSG Dropped, sSikezz, and Rpr.
Raven admitted that he has access to the end zones and has been helping TSM with that. However, he also said, “I don’t see how it’s a lack of competitive integrity.” According to ImperialHal, Alliance, FaZe, FURIA, and Team Liquid also have access to this zone-specific information.
After the whole zone datamining drama, the Apex Legends community has been involved in arguments regarding whether data mining end zones should be legal and whether players and teams should be banned for using this knowledge without letting EA and Respawn know.
Regardless, EA is yet to respond on this issue. So, whether they’ll remove this accessible zone knowledge from the game and punish the teams using it is still unknown.