Apex Legends was a massive hit out of the gate, but since then, many players have complained about a lack of content updates, especially compared to the constantly changing Fortnite. Today, in a surprising reveal, executive producer Drew McCoy explained that this won’t necessarily be changing any time soon.
“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,” McCoy wrote in a blog post. “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.”
The news comes just a day after Polygon reported on the working conditions at Fortnite developer Epic, where artists, programmers, and waves of new contract employees have been experiencing months of intense crunch in order to keep up with the game’s rapid update schedule. “People are working very hard on Fortnite and other Epic efforts,” Epic said in its statement. “Extreme situations such as 100-hour work weeks are incredibly rare, and in those instances, we seek to immediately remedy them to avoid recurrence.”
The concept of overwork and crunch has become a recurring theme in the world of blockbuster video games, with iconic studios like BioWare, which, like Respawn, is owned by EA, and Rockstar reportedly subjecting employees to extreme overtime. Crunch and toxic workplace culture were also problems that plagued the ill-fated studio Telltale Games.
That said, Respawn still plans to continue updating Apex with new features and content, just not at the same pace as its biggest competitor. McCoy says Respawn’s primary focus at the moment is on improving issues surrounding server performance and cheating, and that it plans to release major updates via a seasonal structure. (As part of this focus, the studio says that it will be “pushing out plans for future Titanfall games.”)
“Rapid growth is a wonderful thing to achieve, and we’re thrilled with the response we’ve received since launch,” McCoy says. “However, that growth comes with some clear challenges, and we’ve hit a few bumps along the way, including missteps with our updates, not giving players enough visibility into future content, and not properly setting expectations on how we plan to support Apex Legends.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516424/apex-legends-respawn-avoid-crunch-content-updates-speed-game-industry-overwork
2019-04-25 18:27:08Z
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