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Respawn Entertainment has doubled down on its no crunch culture policy, despite criticism from fans about the slow rollout of content for Apex Legends.
During a recent Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit, game director Chad Grenier reiterated that the company will not overwork its employees for the sake of more Apex Legends content at a faster rate. The remark was in response to a user who commented that the developer is “extremely slow with content”.
“We […] 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 stated. “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.”
Grenier’s comments follow an earlier statement he made in July, when an anonymous employee claimed that Respawn Entertainment had entered crunch in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, he noted that “there is no fear of losing your job and no crunch culture [at the company], and we are open and honest with each other all the time and never avoid difficult conversations.”
During the AMA session, Grenier also addressed the backlash over Apex Legends’ season 7 battle pass. He stated that the initial difficulty to progress through the battle pass was to “[keep] engaged throughout the season”, however after feedback from players, the developer is planning “more changes” in order to “give players more agency on challenge completion”.
Earlier this month, Grenier teased that Apex Legends could expand beyond its current battle royale gameplay mode. During an interview, the game director said that the Apex Legends team are currently focusing on ways to “expand” the game, elaborating that he meant in terms of “new players, new platforms and […] new ways to play Apex”.
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