The CEO of Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has apologised for comments made by a member of staff last week. In a post on Twitter last night, Vince Zampella told players that Respawn devs had “crossed a line” with their comments.
Last week, following community backlash over the game’s Iron Harvest event and its rewards on Reddit, executive producer Drew McCoy said that he had “been in the industry long enough to remember when players weren’t complete ass-hats to developers,” and referred to other players as “freeloaders.”
In his statement, Zampella says that during the discussion, “things got to a pretty bad place. Some of our folks crossed a line with their comments, and that’s not how we want Respawn to be represented. I apologize to any of our fans that were offended.” Zampella goes on to say that “I will always stand behind the team here at Respawn and support them on speaking out against some of the toxic and nasty comments being directed at them.”
However, Zampella also says that devs shouldn’t contribute to that toxicity: “we need to lead by example. Last week we didn’t do that, and going forward we will be better.”
— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) August 19, 2019
“Having an open, healthy relationship with our community is incredibly important to all of us at Respawn.”
While some fans seem to appreciate the sentiment, it seems that others feel Zampella’s comments do nothing to address the problems with the game, while still more seem to think that McCoy’s comments have been taken out of context, suggesting that Respawn still have some damage control to do.