Apex Legends has experienced a bit of a PR rollercoaster over the past few weeks: while Season 7’s new map, legend and vehicles went down well with players, slow progression in the latest battle pass caused some players to complain about grind – angering much of the community and forcing an emergency change from Respawn. To answer community concerns, several members of the Apex Legends dev team recently held a Reddit Q&A in which they addressed the unpopular battle pass. But the team also touched on another topic: the worrying problem of crunch in the games industry.
The comment on crunch comes from Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier, who was responding to a player who wanted more LTMs and felt Respawn was being “slow with content”. Grenier assured the commenter the team was not scared of LTMs, but explained they normally drop-off in interest after a few days, making a two-week format unsuitable. He then went on to state that Respawn was trying to avoid crunch – and content would perhaps release a little slower as a result.
“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 said. “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.”
