Like any live service battle royale game (or any live service game of any genre), Apex Legends relies on a steady and consistent output of new playable content to maintain its solid player base, and it’s something that the game has often struggled with, especially in comparisons to the likes of Fortnite.
Most recently, season 7 has drawn criticism from many players for having slow and grindy progression- but Respawn Entertainment says that the development will continue to be relatively slower at delivering new content in the future, because the other alternative would be to crunch, which is something they refuse to do.
Speaking in an AMA on Reddit, while responding to the aforementioned criticisms, game director Chad Grenier said that Respawn’s Apex team refuses to crunch, and will remain unwilling to overwork its developers going forward as well.
“We also refuse to crunch the team, so we’ll probably be slower at making content than if we worked 15 hour days but that’s just not something we’re willing to do,” Grenier wrote. “We have nearly doubled our team size since launch to accommodate the content demands, so we’re really trying to bring you quality content at a healthy pace.”
This is a stance that Respawn have publicly taken before as well, and it’s one that they deserve all the credit for. There have been reports in the past of how having to cope with the need for constant updates to Fortnite led to excessive and grueling crunch at Epic Games, and it’s more than understandable that that’s a path that Respawn just isn’t willing to take.
Apex Legends is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC (where it recently launched on Steam), and is also playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. On the new consoles, it runs in 1440p. A Nintendo Switch version launches next year.