By CCN.com: Respawn Entertainment, the company responsible for Apex Legends just entered a flame war with the worst possible opponent: gamers.
Today, Respawn published an open letter apologizing for a few store problems related to the new Iron Crown event. Instead of understanding that a free and otherwise excellent game can have some flaws- just like every other game, some players replied aggressively.
That type of reaction has, unfortunately, become the norm. Respawn did not like it, and some the devs took it to heart and replied in a less than friendly manner.
A comment that pretty much sums up Respawn’s anger was made by a developer who goes by dk05 on Reddit.
i’ve been in the industry long enough to remember when players weren’t complete *ss-hats to developers and it was pretty neat. I forged a bunch of long lasting relationships from back then. Would be awesome to get back there, and not engaging with toxic people or asking “how high” when a mob screams “jump” is hopefully a start.
He’s aggressive, but it’s easy to see where he’s coming from for anyone active in the gaming community. The harassment of developers is becoming normalized. Just this year, gamers set in motion a campaign of death threats targetting the developers of the Spider-Man video game. All that to get a costume. And they succeeded. While we don’t condone the language used, it’s a good thing Respawn isn’t tolerating this type of behavior. After reading the messages from the devs, a Redditor published a letter stating that the players would now turn aggressive towards Respawn.
It’s a new thing. Apex legends has been a target of harassment from launch. There are a few obvious reasons for that. Apex Legends is one of the first mainstream games to feature a mostly non-white roster of characters, was created by a diverse team, and well, it’s also amazing. Up to this point, if anything, respawn devs have been playing too nice.
https://twitter.com/teanah/status/1093629671164370944
Here’s hoping this can mark a turning point for the way the industry deals with online harassment.