5 years of Apex Legends: how "surreal" success became a fight to stay fresh
If there’s a secret to how Apex Legends has endured the past five years, an era marked by as many FPS failures as successes, then it might be this: there are no sacred cows in live service. Since its surprise launch in February 2019, developers Respawn Entertainment have chopped and changed everything from hitbox-shrinking Naruto run animations to entire character designs and ability kits, gutting and reworking gear and class mechanics along the way. The incoming Season 20 update, titled Breakout, represents the latest large-scale rejig, adding upgradeable skill tress for its playable Legends that promise MOBA-esque progression and the maddest fights yet.
Then again, if you actually ask Respawn’s Apex team how they reached this point – as I did when I visited their Los Angeles offices for a Season 20 test run – you’re unlikely to get just one answer. Rather, the battle royale’s unusual longevity in a fiercely contested space is more often attributed to those ongoing work-and-rework efforts themselves, the scope of which sometimes remains a surprise to the developers themselves. As does, according to lead game designer Devan McGuire, Apex’s success.