Respawn CEO Vince Zampella has revealed there are no plans to do weekly updates for Apex Legends. The battle royale game will continue to have seasonal updates instead, in an effort to prevent development crunch at Respawn.
Although Zampella didn’t reference Epic Games or Fortnite in Respawn’s reasoning, his announcement does come in on the heels of a Polygon report that revealed Epic Games maintains its ability to do weekly content updates for Fortnite with severe work crunch. Employees have reported working anywhere between 70-100 hours a week. Some employees have even been fired for missing deadlines after choosing to not work weekends, which further cultivates a culture where working long hours is expected of all employees.
“Our intention was to always be seasonal, so we’re kind of staying with that,” Zampella saidin an interview with Gamasutra. “The thought was ‘Hey, we kind of have something that’s blowing up here, do we want to start trying to drop more content?’ But I think you look at quality of life for the team. We don’t want to overwork the team, and drop the quality of the assets we’re putting out. We want to try and raise that.”
Zampella explained that the plan for Apex Legends was always going to be from season to season, despite the popularity of Fortnite thanks in large part to its weekly updates. However, Zampella did admit that Respawn is still figuring out the pacing for new content in Apex Legends. For now, the length of Apex Legends’ seasons is a “total guess,” and there’s a chance they could either be made shorter or longer in the future.
Respawn knows Season 1 was too light on new content, Zampella continued, and the developer already has plans to provide a much larger offering in Season 2. “All the resources on the team are focused on getting this game in a better position so it plays well, so we have enough content, so the seasons are better,” Zampella said.
Apex Legends is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. In our Apex Legends review, Phil Hornshaw wrote, “Apex Legends is a mix of smart shooter ideas that makes for a competitive, team-based game that gets at all the best parts of battle royale while addressing a lot of the weaknesses. Respawn’s intense focus on team play makes Apex more than just a worthy addition to the genre; it’s an indicator of where battle royale should go in the future.”
