Respawn delays 'tap-strafing' removal from 'Apex Legends' after discovering unforeseen side effects

The controversial maneuver isn't getting axed from the game just yet.

Apex Legends pros were less than pleased over the announcement that ‘tap-strafing’ was getting removed from the game, but that won’t happen anytime soon, it seems. At least not with patch 10.1 as was initially planned. 

“The Apex Legends team has recently discovered some unexpected side effects of our planned changes to tap-strafing,” Respawn Entertainment said in a statement on Twitter. “It is still our intention to address some of the most egregious use-cases of tap-strafing, but for now, we are delaying our planned change to a later patch.”

Respawn continued: “Movement is sacred in Apex. We weigh every change to these systems carefully and value feedback. After further testing, we’ve concluded we need to take more time to get this right to make sure related movement mechanics aren’t caught in the cross-fire.” 

The @playapex team has recently discovered some unexpected side effects of our planned changes to tap-strafing.

It is still our intention to address some of the most egregious use-cases of tap-strafing, but for now we are delaying our planned change to a later patch.

— Respawn (@Respawn) September 13, 2021

Respawn, of course, wouldn’t divulge any information as to what those side effects might be, but that hasn’t rampant speculation. The popular theory is that the controversial maneuver is the byproduct of Apex Legend’s physics and momentum engine and that removing it causes other problems. Either way, we likely won’t know unless the developers come out and state why.

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.