The last three months have been nothing short of wild for the team at Respawn Entertainment. To say their new battle royale game, Apex Legends, was a massive success is actually quite the understatement.
Apex Legends came right out of the blue, hitting the ground running from the get-go. The game reeled in over 10 million players within 72 hours of its launch, and 25 million over its first week.
Since its release, Apex Legends had finally begun doling out seasonal content, as per its year one roadmap teased earlier this year. And according to an open statement by the game’s executive producer, Drew McCoy, it seems the Apex Legends team are only getting started with bringing out the big guns to its rapidly-growing player base.
One of the biggest issues many players faced is the slow server speed at the start of a match. This issue was highlighted many times over, and the team at Respawn are “trying to nail down what work it’s doing and work backwards to understand the root cause.
Another problem faced by players concerns that of cheaters. Apex Legends runs using the Easy-Anti-Cheat software. So far, they’ve managed to stifle over 355,000 players thanks to this software. However, more cheaters are still at large, and they’re doubling down their efforts on ratting these perpetrators out.
Those two issues are the most notable among a slew of other patches the Apex team plans to roll out over the next two months.
Content-wise, bigger and better things are further down the pipleline, especially for Season Two. Season One introduced the Battle Pass, as well as Octane, a new Legend.
The next Season will bring a new Legend, a new Battle Pass, and, most importantly, a possible overhaul to Kings Canyon, the island arena that matches take place in.
More on these will be announced at EA Play this coming June.
“We are 100% committed to the long-term growth of Apex Legends, and supporting the millions playing every day,” said McCoy in the statement. “So today we want to reset our commitment to you and give you some insight into where we are as a development team and how we’re approaching live service for Apex Legends.”
McCoy also promised players that, while Respawn is simultaneously working on the upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and “plans for further Titanfall games”, nothing is being pulled from the Apex Legends team, and that the folks there are fully committed to working on this title wholesale.
You can read more on the statement on the Apex Legends official website.
Respawn is indeed promising a whole lot to its players. We’re no doubt excited.
In the wake of the nightmarish “crunch culture” propagated by other AAA companies, let’s also hope that Respawn and EA aren’t grinding out their hard-working staff dry.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.
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