Respawn Entertainment Apologizes To Apex Legends Fans After the Hateful Comments

After making hateful comments towards Apex Legends fans, Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampalla has publically apologized on behalf of the company.

After coming under fire for making a series of rude and vulgar comments made by Community Managers directed towards Apex Legends fans on Reddit, Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampalla has publically apologized to Apex Legends players on behalf of the company.

It all started with the Respawn Entertainment Community Mangement team announcing several changes being made to the Iron Crown event in a post made onto Apex Legends’ Subreddit. The Iron Crown event introduces a number of skins to Apex Legends and presents players with two ways they can acquire them. They can either take part in a very long tiring grind to earn them against a very expensive loot box mechanic or simply purchase them via microtransactions.

Of course, microtransactions aren’t seen as a good thing in the gaming community and is disliked by many gamers. So this recent Reddit post made on Friday announced several changes to the Iron Crown event. Primarily, Respawn Entertainment has made them available to purchase directly via the Apex Legends’ in-game currency.

Now, fans didn’t like this immediately and the comment section got heated really quickly. All of the sudden fed-up Respawn developers started to reply to some of the comments in a very hostile way. Most of these comments have been deleted but users managed to screenshot them before they disappeared and now are making rounds on the internet.

A lot of gamers are calling this a direct attack on the gaming community. Just because some gamers dislike the microtransactional, loot box, and games-as-a-service culture that a lot of game developers are bringing in doesn’t mean that they are “freeloaders”.

One Redditor even said that the Respawn Entertainment has “committed the ultimate cardinal sin, you [Respawn Entertainment] got personal.”

“We won’t forget this,” they wrote.

“You’ve set a new tone for the kind of interaction we’ll be having with you. It’s a cold one.”

Since then, Respawn Entertainment’s CEO, Vince Zampalla has issued out a public apology on behalf of those who made the hostile comments on Apex Legends’ Subreddit this Friday.

There’s a saying that goes something like this: “Don’t feed the trolls” and what happened on Friday is exactly why that’s true. Respawn Entertainment should really listen to the fans for once and realize that video games are not all business. In fact, this is something every developer working in the video game industry should realize.

Video games are a form of entertainment but for some gamers, its way beyond that, it’s downright passion. Gamers absolutely love games with all their heart. Once game developers dilute that passion with business models and schemes just to make a bunch of money is the exact moment of their downfall.

Respawn Entertainment has said they want to build an “open, healthy relationship” with their community. We hope that they really learn from this mistake.