Respawn refuses to crunch team for Apex Legends

Apex Legends maker Respawn is trying to update the game without breaking its staff.

Developer Respawn Entertainment has said that it won't make its staff work long hours to increase the amount of content for Apex Legends. In an AMA event on Reddit, game director Chad Grenier replied to someone accusing the studio of being "extremely slow" with new updates for the free-to-play battle royale title.

"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."

Respawn also said that it has no plans for a Quads mode any time soon. Apex Legends was released with teams of three and has since launched a two-player Duo mode, but isn't interesting rolling out a four-player mode.

"We don't have any plans to release Quads," design director Jason McCord said.

"We needed to decide this early on in testing. Trios is the magic number for us. That's when the legend composition really shines and the X-Men vs Avengers fantasy starts to shine through. When you play Quads, which we tested early on, the combat becomes nearly untrackable. It's chaotic in a negative way."

Respawn recently launched the seventh season of Apex Legends, which has introduced the Olympus map and the brand new character, Horizon. The studio has teased that future seasons will "probably" expand the game "beyond battle royale," whatever that means.

Apex Legends came to Steam at the start of November and is already one of the most popular games on the PC platform.