Apex Legends fans are a dedicated group, constantly making requests of developer Respawn Entertainment. While most questions and comments are respectful, a fair bit can be toxic, something that has led an Apex Legends developer to speak up.
While Apex Legends developer David Klein recently responded to complaints that the Winter Express mode is recycled content, he was also questioned about the bundles in the Apex Legends store. Klein apologized, saying that he has no influence on the bundles and learns of what is happening at the same time as the players. After saying that he can only focus on doing his own job and making the game great in that area, he apologized once again, but the statement was not good enough for some players.
Klein’s response led to an entitled comment from a Redditor that said, “next time devs show up, can you guys bring along someone who can speak to the pricing model, bundle trend, and generally horrible store?” This led to the Respawn developer to share why people handling Apex Legends skin packs do not speak much on social media, as Klein shared his own experiences with toxic gamers. The lengthy post includes many examples of gamers going too far, and it perfectly explains why some developers may want to stay offline.
Much like voice actor Laura Bailey following The Last of Us 2, Klein received “credible enough death threats” that made his former studio permanently cancel tours. His wife received daily e-mails asking that her husband be fired, despite Klein’s spouse not even working in the gaming industry. With swatting, horrible lies regarding pedophilia, and even “photoshopped images of execution victims with [Klein’s] face swapped in,” the developer’s history with the internet is a clear example of the toxicity issues in the gaming community.
While Klein shared that he still talks online because of the “energy and happiness” he gets from discussing games, he makes it clear that not every dev should be forced to talk about what they make. While Klein deals mainly with balancing Legends like Wraith, many members of the microtransaction team have been treated poorly due to issues like pricing. Klein says that it would be “wrong to ever require your employees to go out onto social media and directly interact with players” due to the possibility of toxicity, highlighting that women, people of color, and transgender developers would likely have it even worse than he has.
While the Apex Legends community is surely full of kindhearted members, the toxicity Klein condemns is clearly a major problem on both the Apex Legends subreddit and gaming as a whole. Until gamers learn to be more mature and respectful, developers have every right to stay quiet about the games they make.
Apex Legends is free-to-play on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Switch version coming in 2021.
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