Apex Legends devs discuss how the team has never had to rely on crunch

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Several developers on Apex Legends have praised the team for its healthy working conditions

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(Image credit: EA)

A number of developers working on Apex Legends have openly discussed how crunch has never affected them whilst working at Respawn. 

In a Twitter exchange that started with a statement from Apex Legends’ game director Chad Grenier (reposted by an Apex Legends news account), principal environmental artist Jobye-Kyle Karmaker retweeted the quote adding their own comments about the issues raised in the quote in a seven-part thread. 

The original quote from Grenier read: "We also refuse to crunch the team, so we’ll probably be slower at making content than if we worked 15 hour days but that’s just not something we’re willing to do." Karmarker then retweeted this adding: "Feel incredibly lucky to be on @PlayApex. It’s so nice to have leadership from @ChadGrenier & crew that value team health & that actively take steps to protect it publicly + internally."

The thread then delves into what it is like working as part of the environment art team on Apex Legends, Karmarker adds: "our leads are very vigilant and try to mitigate crunch as much as they can." They then gave an example of this detailing how the Apex Legends Olympus map launched and the schedule was "feeling incredibly tight," however according to Karmarker, the environment art leads and director noticed this and made changes to the schedule to better support the team.

It seems the healthy workload isn’t exclusive to the environmental art department of Apex Legends either, as Karmarker’s thread was then retweeted by principal level designer on Apex Legends Rodney Reece who added: "Really need to second this thread. I’ve worked on some brutal crunches. But I’ve never crunched on Apex. In fact: we came in early on Storm Point [the new Apex Legend map]." 

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Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.