Apex Legends Update Promises New Features, but No Crazy Crunch Time

Apex Legends took a beating in terms of Twitch viewership, but this bad boy is still standing… for now. If it’ll survive the Avengers x Fortnite crossover event happening right now is anyone’s guess, but assuming that it’s still being played after that blows over, Respawn just recently published a blog post that details some of the future plans for Apex Legends… and opens up some conversations about how the game will be progressing moving forward.

For starters: they made it clear that the priority right now is fixing up issues that still plague the game. These include the well-documented server slowdowns that sometimes plagues games at the start of matches, audio issues, Hit Registration issues, and of course, the growing number of cheaters that are causing problems on the PC version of the game. They also acknowledged that there are people hungry for more content, but perhaps as a nod to the recent Epic report, they say they need to balance new content with not over-working their relatively small team:
 

“We know that, in addition to addressing issues with the game, everyone is hungry for us to add new content. The studio culture that we’ve worked hard to cultivate, and the health of our team are very important. We take those things into account when we discuss our content roadmap, the production schedule, and the frequency in which we can update the game. Our long-term goal is to ensure Apex Legends always feels alive and thriving, with a focus on quality of content over novelty or speed of release. At the same time, we want to maintain our culture as a development team and avoid crunch that can quickly lead to burnout or worse.”

 
But they did still talk about new content: specifically, improving future season passes, the fact that new legends will be launching with every season, and a commitment to improved communication with their players on all subjects except anti-cheat measurements, which… makes sense. Either way, they wrapped up by saying that at the upcoming EA PLAY event, they’ll be showing off new guns, a new Legend, and changes that will be coming to the map.

All-in-all, it’s a good little update, and encouraging, too: every studio that says they prioritize employee health is a good guy in my book now, so I can forgive a spotty first season pass and slower updates if it means no one at Respawn is breaking out in tears.

But we’ll be talking about that later this week…