It’s hardly a secret that Apex Legends has experienced a rocky few months since its explosive launch back in February. Despite the battle royale’s tremendously promising start to life, a general lack of new content and particularly invasive performance issues have hampered an otherwise top-tier addition to the genre. Despite those glaring shortfalls, Respawn’s shooter remains a frontrunner among its peers in terms of solid gunplay, though even that strong foundation can only carry a title so far.
Following a PlayStation 4 specific patch rolled out yesterday, reports of frequent crashes and bugs affecting various parts of the game swiftly started flying in on social media. Respawn’s Jay Frechette promptly took to Reddit thereafter in order to acknowledge the root cause and that a temporary hotfix had been rolled out, though the statement did little to calm perturbed fans.
Though relatively minor in nature, the hiccup has unintentionally reopened old wounds, serving as the catalyst for further mistrust among the wider player base. One fan makes note of the continued issues plaguing Apex‘s in-game sound, describing how audio consistently “tears up or” or becomes “completely unhearable,” especially when venturing into so-called hot zones. Frechette later recognizes the issue and promises that the development team will be “talking more about what they’ll be addressing” next week, though his words only serve to rile up the crowd even further.
“That’s what you said last week and the week before that and before that,” reads the response from Reddit user prinicalpkrump, who continues to berate the studio for a perceived lack of inaction over serious matters. “You ask us to be patient. We love the game and wanna see it succeed. But you give us half ass answers like ‘we don’t wanna work our devs to hard. Like seriously push a hot patch. Fix one bug. Give us something man.”
Not unexpectedly, Frechette offers no response to the outburst of frustration but he, as well as his employer, will be acutely aware of the uphill struggle it faces in reestablishing a good relationship with the Apex Legends community.
Several blog posts aiming to do just that have appeared in recent weeks, but is it too little, too late? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
