Aaron Mibab 10: Apex Legends (part 3): Problems

In this blog, I am discussing some new or important issues plaguing the game. 

Apex Legends has had many issues, most of which I would attribute to the company owning the development studio (Respawn Entertainment), EA or Electronic Arts. As I stated in my first blog on Apex, EA is notorious for being greedy regarding microtransactions, and unfortunately, it applies to Apex. Although Apex Legends's situation is not as bad as some other games, it is far from perfect. Many can argue that the free game abuses its high prices and does not reinvest enough into improving the game. I understand that companies need profit, but for a game that made $2 billion in revenue since launch and a projected $1 billion a year for future years, the whole system is running with absurdly little money reinvested. 

The tournaments are partly funded by specific (tournament-related) in-game purchases, which is done in many games, but for apex, a large amount of the prize is derived from these specific purchases. Additionally, the community was recently made aware that many of the casters for these tournaments were unpaid, instead paid by the “free exposure” they receive. This is absurd as casters add commentary that improves and makes the tournaments worth watching and additionally this is disappointing for a game with so much profit. I personally have not given much attention to the ALGS but overall I am discouraged with these findings.

As of writing, I (and the community) recently discovered another issue. LuluLuvely (who has previously brought up the issues I will mention next), in a stream, mentioned that she is quitting apex due to a lack of creator support and mistreatment by EA. EA has previously mistreated teams through a last-second change regarding purchasable skins with the logos of teams fans support by instead of scaling the payment based on the sales per team, they decided to pay a flat fee for the logos. For a skin set released a while back for an event, LuluLuvely along with other creators worked with EA and the team for creator skins representing themselves. The day before these were released, EA changed the skins to no longer be named after creators or explicitly related to them and to not give a revenue split to the creators. I was personally surprised because I had no idea I missed out on a skin that “supported” (even if only by name) the content makers I enjoy. 

The Apex ranked system has long needed corrections and improvements and despite a lot of efforts for improvement, the community is not seeing enough. Whether it be the rampant cheating at the highest and lowest ranks, cross-teaming (which is occasionally acceptable in public matches), poor rewards for effort, poor matchmaking, or the bad way rank is determined has led many to be upset with the current state. This season also did not try to rectify these issues but according to rumors, there is a big change to look forward to after this season. 

Skilled-based matchmaking is also a big issue in Apex that LuluLuvely spoke of but due to connections to another topic for my next Apex blog, it (along with other issues) will be mentioned there. 

What are your thoughts on the problems of apex so far? Has this blog post convinced you not to play apex (hint it's still a great game)?

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