Respawn is 'never gonna make an Apex 2'

Apex Legends is a more languid sort of battle royale than most others, at least in terms of its development. Updates come more slowly, and everything feels more deliberate: The Mozambique has famously sucked since day one, for instance, and Respawn has been happy enough to leave it that way while it figures out the best way to make it viable. (Some performance-enhancing hop-ups are on the way.)

But that's not a sign that the developers aren't thinking about the game's long-term future. In fact, executive producer Drew McCoy told USgamer that it's exactly the opposite.

"Most people don't realize how long it takes to make anything, and so a character for us takes about a year and a half to make," McCoy said. "So we've been playing Wattson since early last year, but we have so much stuff in the pipe right now coming that people are always like, 'So what are you guys gonna do for this or that?' Like dude, we're thinking years ahead at this point."

A common conception of live games is that they're in a constant state of flux: New content flows weekly, and bug fixes and balance tweaks can be daily occurrences. Respawn has positioned its less-rushed approach as a feature, not a failing—the studio has said in patch notes for an earlier update that its goal is to produce "less frequent, better tested, higher impact changes"—but McCoy said that despite the slower pace, "we do believe in this game as a live game," and it's really committed to it.

"We're never gonna make an Apex 2; hoping next Season 2 is awesome," he said. "That's kind of where our head is at: how are we setting this up for the long term."

Apex Legends season 2 is set to kick off on July 2, but some very interesting things are already happening.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.