Apex Legends producer calls players ‘dicks’, ‘ass-hats’, and ‘freeloaders’

Apex Legends - there weren't so many smiling faces over the weekend — Apex Legends – there weren’t so many smiling faces over the weekend

With Apex Legends already under fire for its use of microtransactions and loot boxes an argument on Reddit at the weekend saw anger boil over between fans and developers.

Things started off well enough, with Respawn admitting in a blog post that they were in the wrong over the Iron Crown Collection Event, saying that they, ‘missed the mark when we broke our promise by making Apex Packs the only way to get what many consider to be the coolest skins we’ve released.’

When things spilled over onto Reddit though the mood turned nasty, with a number of Respawn developers taking part, the most senior of which was executive producer Drew McCoy.

‘I’ve been in the industry long enough to remember when players weren’t complete ass-hats to developers and it was pretty neat. I forged a bunch of long-lasting relationships from back then,’ said McCoy. ’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.’

‘I guess you can also remember when developers weren’t money-grabbing f**** that scammed their players’, was the reply from one fan, who McCoy then referred to as ‘a dick’.

When other fan complained that it felt like Respawn were trying to, ‘squeeze every last dime out of us’ McCoy also replied:

‘The amount of people who spend is crazy low, most of ya’ll are freeloaders (and we love that!) and a change in price doesn’t move the needle.’

As both sides got more and more angry community manager Jay Frechette defended McCoy’s language: ‘So it’s fine for you all to call us liars, full of s***, and other personal attacks when we communicate an apology and update to the event but we’re ‘immature’ when we call people out on it. Got it’.

From there everything descended into predictable talk about alienating the fanbase and implications about boycotts.

It’s unlikely that would actually happen but it’s unusual to see developers get quite so angry in public, although the fairest summary seems to be that everyone was in the wrong.