Yesterday I penned a blog in which I went over the recent controversy that was raging across the fanbase of Apex legends. At the time is was all; extortionate price points, greedy tactics and empty apologies; but as bad as all that sounds, and it was bad, for my money it was the response from Respawn Entertainment that really caused the damage. Before I do get into this, I would like to let everyone know that I have great respect for developers, especially the Respawn team, they have delivered fantastic games for as long as I can remember and rarely receive the credit they deserve. I was happy to see them finally have a hit in Apex Legends and wish them all the best going forward; that being said, my respect does not blind me to ugly mistakes or deafen their honeyed words. Over 24 hours have transpired since the last development has been issued in this matter and so I think I'm clear to discuss it today.
For those who are unaware, Reddit is one of the most vocal Internet forums within which to discuss fandom. They call themselves the frontpage of the Internet, rather pretentiously, but given their relevance you could argue that the title is an apt one. This is because Reddit offers access to thousands communities on a platform that is, ideally, unbiased and without an agenda. Many casual fans (Or those with communication difficulties, like myself.) find it difficult to engage on official forums as they appear to be rife with overbearing reverence and rarely any critical thought or analysis. Therefore these people tend to head to neutral ground, like Reddit, in order to share their thoughts. (Unless you are a Star Citizen critic, in which case, no forum is safe for you.) Due to this, many community managers for companies know that Reddit is an important place to focus their attention to get an idea on what the community thinks, they may not be representative of the entire player base, but if your going to get unbiased feedback anywhere, it'll be there. Now that I'm done unintentionally belittling your Internet acumen, let me get into details.
In all this fervour there were a few posts and comments that crossed the metaphorical line. Death threats and personal attacks are clearly undeserved and hyperbolic, but are also issued by those unfortunate individuals that most usually ignore in the community so as not to muddy the issues at hand. Clearly no one told this to the Respawn team.
During all of this discourse, comments started popping up from accounts belonging to a couple key members of staff; namely Executive producer, Drew McCoy and Community manager, Jay Frechette. Now, when developers of this calibre take to the discussion you could be forgiving in expecting some high tier damage control in the works, however that isn't what happened. Drew, who penned that apology that everyone tore into for being disingenuous, made several regrettable comments that did not help their case. Most notably would be the message in which he expressed. "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. 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."
Now, disregarding the way in which this comment completely ignores the issues at play by simply labelling the backlash 'Mob mentality', (Because customers are too stupid to be disgusted on their own.) I do believe that Drew had aimed this comment more at those unfortunate individuals I mentioned earlier than at the majority of folks. The problem is that, since those people go ignored by the majority, all anyone saw was the comment that Drew made which, contextless, reads as tone deaf and pretty awful.
This tone persists throughout the responses with Drew making seemingly asinine comments in response to posts that get lost in the horde. He also went onto to calling someone a "Dick" (Who left a pretty passionate, if profanity laden, paragraph), then boasted about how he only read the first sentence of that message and the last, not unlike how a highschooler would. Jay came to Drew's defence by issuing nothing but pure sarcasm, enraging the community that he is professionally obligated to manage.
This all looks pretty damning for Respawn's part, but I will come to their defence in that I can understand where this is coming from. This team have worked so hard to create Apex and they care intensely about everything they do; so when they start to see their own community descend upon them and start ruthlessly admonishing their direction, it's difficult from them not to take it personally. Unfortunately, it doesn't help that the actions the Jay and Drew were standing up for are frankly indefensible. You can publish all the apologies and denials that you want, but actions speak so much louder than words, and Respawn still are yet to act.
There have been a few that have come to the defense of these practises, including some influencers (A few of whom are financially tied to the lootbox community.) The arguments generally follow the same lines; "the game is free, be grateful!" or "These prices aren't for you, they're for big spenders." Drew shared similar statements when he claimed that their these price points don't affect the majority of community, uttering the much-memed words "Most of ya'll are freeloaders, and we love that!" I find that discourse in this issue tends to get derailed so I want to express my opinions on that particular matter.
Before I do, however, I would like to address the controversy behind Drew calling the fans "Freeloaders." Reddit exploded at this comment, accusing him of belittling the fanbase for not ponying up, but I have to say, this is the point where I get off the outrage train. Given the context I just shared, you can clearly see that he awards the title in a joking, irreverent way; to call this an attack on the community is frankly absurd. The man made a joke, some could argue it to be in poor taste given the backlash, but that doesn't make you right to take his words and run with them. If anyone wants to convey a message of stern disapproval over Apex's pricing structure it is imperative that they don't get distracted from the issue with silly tangents like the "Freeloaders" comment. Besides, that doesn't even touch on what is truly wrong with this message.
You see, Drew and these influencers seem to operate on the assumption that just because these heavy price points are not forced upon the general community, that makes them harmless; whereas I would argue that this is not the case. Firstly, I'm not sure when it became acceptable to ignore the ill effect something might incur just because it's more likely to harm someone other than yourself. Sure I'm not the most empathetic individual in the world, but I still can't stomach it when I hear stories of people financially crippling themselves from microtransaction's and addiction or children flushing their parents money on lootboxes. (Like I covered a few weeks back.) I'm not sure how Drew or those YouTubers can stomach it either.
Then there is the assumption that these actions do not affect the wider audience. But they do. Because of a little word called: Precedent. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was one of the earliest games to overload their digital marketplace with micro-DLC for a negligible price. No one realized what this system was and thus didn't push back against it. COD raked in huge swaths of money and now we have microtransactions in every game. Same thing with Season Passes, Lootboxes, Timed offers, timewalls/paywalls and Sequel-itis. It takes an outright rejection from the consumers (Like with Battlefront 2's lootboxes) to affect lasting change.
After all of this chaos erupted, CEO of Respawn, Vince Zampella, issued an apology on behalf of his developers. Whilst he claimed that he would always stand up for their right to push back against abuse, he acknowledged that a few of them crossed that ol' proverbial line and promised that communication would be more respectful in the future. The sentiment was nice, but the seeds of discontent have already been sown into the community and sown deep. If people were upset with Respawn before, they still stuck up for the company because most just assumed "Hey, it's probably an initiative from EA. They're hands are likely tied." After this response, however, the community are downright mistrusting of Respawn, now they understand that this ugly monetisation scheme represents the vision that the studio have for the game going forward.
This situation reminds of similar debacles between developers and consumers such as No Man's Sky, Anthem and Fallout 76. They all underwent similar backlashes and found that when attempts were made to quell the storm, no one listened. Ultimately, this may be a response to the way how the gaming community have grown mostly immune to corporate speak in recent years. It has been abused by companies (Who shall remain nameless) so frequently that now it actively enrages people to hear such canned platitudes. It was only when the teams behind games like NMS and Fallout 76 started to prove their sentiments through actions that people actually started to listen to them. (Anthem is still working on that part.)
Recently, Shaun Murray (CEO of Hello Games, creators of No Man's Sky) shared his opinion on what game's companies can do in the midst of controversy. He claimed that the best choice is to go radio silent, because otherwise you only serve to make things worse. Some would disagree and say that this is the way you make people assume that you've abandoned the project and moved on. I find this particular back and forth fascinating as it delves in psychology and the relationship between the artist and the consumer. So many factors go into both sides of the argument that you could literally hold this debate for hours. One thing all sides can agree on, however, is that whatever you do, don't respond like how Respawn did.
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