Apex Legends debuts a free Pride badge

apex legends Valkyrie — (Image credit: Activision)

Apex Legends is celebrating Pride with a free in-game badge you can equip to your Legends' banners.

In celebration of Pride Month, we’ve granted all @playapex players a special Pride badge. Pride is the opposite of shame: It's about being proud of who you are. We stand with and support players of all sexualities and gender identities. #PRIDE pic.twitter.com/NfsgY6dZEiJune 3, 2021

Respawn announced the Pride badge with a video featuring LGBTQIA+ employees discussing the badge's design and how Apex Legends represents members of the community through its characters. "We make the game that we want to play," says Annelie Fors, operators manager," And by having diverse representation in our game, we're showing our players a world that is as diverse as the world really is."

In Apex Legends, Valkyrie is canonically a lesbian, Gibraltar is gay, Loba is bisexual, Fuse is pansexual, and Bloodhound is non-binary. "It's crucial also that these characters don't feel tokenized," says associate quality designer Mackenzie Galbraith. "The fact that Bloodhound is non-binary is part of their character, but it's not the whole thing."

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The Apex Legends Pride badge features a design based on the contemporary Pride flag, which includes representation for Black, brown, and trans community members. The contemporary Pride flag puts "more emphasis on additionally marginalized people within our communities", explains Galbraith. "What I really find nice about the flag is the forward arrow chevron design, just kind of implying there's always this movement towards more inclusivity, more diversity, more allowance and acceptance of expression," says Jaclyn Yuan, senior live artist.

This isn't the first time Respawn has added badges to Apex Legends referencing identities or important social and cultural movements. Apex Legends added a Black Lives Matter badge in February of this year to celebrate Black History Month. For Respawn, the free badge was a "small reminder that we must always stand in solidarity with our Black colleagues, partners, family, friends, & players in the fight against racism and social injustice". After a rise in AAPI-related violence, Apex Legends added a Stop Asian Hate badge as well as a banner that popped up upon login that read, "Respawn, our AAPI Community, and our allies are united against Asian hate. Violence aimed at AAPI members, especially those without the ability to defend themselves, is abhorrent and unacceptable."

To get your free Apex Legends Pride badge, simply boot up and head to the Legends section at the top of the main menu. Then select a Legend, head over to Banner, and pick the Pride badge from the list. There you go, it's that easy.

Alyssa Mercante used to be a features writer at GamesRadar+ and is now a freelance writer and editor. Prior to entering the industry, she got her Masters's degree in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University with a dissertation focusing on contemporary indie games. She spends most of her time playing competitive shooters and in-depth RPGs and was recently on a PAX Panel about the best bars in video games. In her spare time Alyssa rescues cats, practices her Italian, and plays soccer.