All brands love engagement, a metric which indicates how many people are shouting at you on Twitter, but few love it more than fast food restaurants. If something's trending, you can bet Arby's, Wendy's, and KFC have something to say about it. They feed on Likes and Retweets. We gorge ourselves on their oily meats. Eating is a meme now. Restaurants are people. Chicken has an opinion on Apex Legends.
KFC, specifically, has an opinion on Apex Legends. If you didn't already know, I regret to be the one to inform you that the fried chicken bucket maker has a Twitter account (opens in new tab) dedicated to gaming memes.
"C'mon, do something," says the latest piece by its corporate teen impersonator. A figure prods the Apex Legends logo with a stick, indicating that it's dead to lament the speed at which Respawn is updating its battle royale shooter.
pic.twitter.com/kHKnVgmKGlMay 13, 2019
Maybe KFC should read PC Gamer more often. We recently reported that Respawn is intentionally sticking to seasonal updates to avoid overworking the dev team.
Following that, Jody dug deeper into the industry's problem with momentum. To stay eternally at the top of everyone's minds, devs behind games like Fortnite crunch out endless updates, spinning a wheel that must never slow—if they pause for just a moment, the game is declared "dead." It's clearly unsustainable.
Of course, right on cue, here's a fast food chain accusing Apex of lifelessness for sticking to a reasonable development schedule.
"Dearest brand," wrote (opens in new tab) Respawn developer Rayme Vinson in response to KFC, a fast food chain whose parent company has paid millions of dollars (opens in new tab) to settle wage and hour violation lawsuits. "We've got tons of stuff coming, but it takes a little time. We can't hyper-fry or flash-flambe or crunch-inject or whatever it is you do to your tasty fried birdflesh. This gameplay is hand-crafted using old-world techniques. Eat some chicken, we'll see you soon."
It's a diplomatic response, but good to see Respawn sticking to its Mozambiques.
For its part, Twitter has responded appropriately by spamming "Silence, Brand" in the replies of KFC's original post. I do feel for social media managers who must spend their days posting memes and being shouted at, but someone's gotta collect all that hearty, iron-rich engagement for the brands. Without it, they might just wither away.
