Apex Legends - Respawn Calls Out Players as "Freeloaders"

Hours before the release of Iron Crown Collection event in Apex Legends, which would introduce us to Solo mode and some of the greatest character and weapon skins that the game ever offered, everyone was overly-excited for the new update. Unfortunately, as soon as the new event was live, the community started to rush red from anger and disappointment.

(Header Picture Source: Reddit, u/SharnOfTheDEAD)

The Scandal Around the Iron Crown Event.

The pricing model of the Iron Crown Event Store, Apex Legends

So, to get into the tea, the Iron Crown Event might be the most overpriced event in the history of free-to-play games. A total of 24 new items were released, along with a new Heirloom bundle for Bloodhound. In order to be able to purchase Bloodhound’s Heirloom, at a price of 3.500 Apex Coins, the player should first own all 24 event items in advance. The only way to get on those 24 event items, is by purchasing the event Apex Packs, at a price of 700 Gold Coins each. So, let me do the math for you.

You need to spend around 200$ in order to own everything on the event. If you want the new Heirloom set, you are doomed to buy them all, if again you just want a skin from the 24 event items, you should gamble your gbuts out, buying those overpriced loot boxes, until you get the skin that you want.

As it was expected, the community rushed the wost feedbacks on this, and EA’s, Respawn’s and Apex Legends subreddits were on fire, with tons of players calling out EA for the pricing model of the event, as everybody thought that this was solely EA’s work. As later showed, this was not exactly the case.

Drew McCoy’s Response on the Backlash & The Update He Proposed.

Some days after the backlash from the community, Drew McCoy posted “An Update on the Iron Crown Event”, proposing a “middle ground solution”, in order to keep the community satisfied and on track. But if you take a look at the changes he proposed, you will see that he obviously made it even worse.

The update that was proposed by Drew McCoy, Apex Legends

So, instead of lowering the prices, and give players that purchased those overpriced items a refund, he proposed that the Legendary items of the event solely would be available in the game’s store for a regular Legendary item price, which means for 1.800 Apex Coins (18$ in real money). So, basically, what they say is that you can buy half of the skins from the store, but still, you have to buy those overprices RNG loot boxes if you still want that Heirloom.

Of course, this move from Respawn has drawn more and more negative feedback from the community, and at this point, Respawn started to pull down their “professional masks”, and showed us the real face of the people behind Respawn’s team.

Respawn’s Devs Flaming Out People, Calling Them Names in Their Own Subreddit.

No matter what are your thoughts on a customer, in this case, the Apex Legends’ community, you don’t call your customers names like “freeloaders”, a**-hats, or d*cks, especially if they didn’t put a personal threat on you. After all the criticism, one of Respawn’s developer fired back at some community members on a Reddit thread about the re-modeling of the event’s pricing. Well, this is what he told…

No matter if he is right or wrong, this kind of talk in public towards your clients is totally unprofessional and unacceptable. As it was expected, many players have since boycotted Apex Legends by uninstalling the game, asking for refunds, and even by recruiting more people to stop playing until Respawn fix this mess they created. Since those incidents, the only feedback by the company is this…

Respawn’s member apologizes for their developer’s hateful comments, Apex Legends

The only thing that is left to do now is to wait for a better settle on the issue. The fun part is, that most of the players have now given up on the cosmetic issues, and push developers to focus on in-game-problems, and not on the pricing of some skins. Most of the community, as it is expected, is more worried about the bugs, the audio drop-off’s, and the continuous disconnections players suffer from. Pressure on Respawn is huge for sure, but they should definitely reconsider their sayings and their actions, as they very well know that the gaming community is tough on the games they love, but only for the game’s best.

We all hope Respawn can recover from this, and focus on the real issues of this game.