Apex Legends Responds To Iron Crown Backlash, Apologizes For Broken Promises

Following considerable and prolonged backlash from fans, Respawn Entertainment has addressed and responded to the criticism of Apex Legends' recent Iron Crown event. Further, it's making changes. More specifically, Respawn notes this has been a learning experience for it, and in the meanwhile, it's changing how legendary skins in the event can be earned, making the current implementation less punishing.

For those that don't know: the Iron Crown event began earlier this week. One of the things the event brought with it was a variety of new legendary skins for each hero. But getting the skins isn't easy. Not only are they stuck behind a paywall, but a loot box. The only way to earn the skins is from loot boxes that cost roughly $7 each.

"At launch we made a promise to players that we intend to do monetization in a way that felt fair and provided choice to players on how they spent their money and time," reads the Reddit statement. "A core decision during development of Apex Legends was that we wanted to make a world class battle royale game - in quality, depth, progression, and important for today's conversation - how we sell stuff. With the Iron Crown event we missed the mark when we broke our promise by making Apex Packs the only way to get what many consider to be the coolest skins we've released."

The statement continues:

"We've heard you and have spent a lot of time this week discussing the feedback and how we structure events in the future, as well as changes that we will make to Iron Crown."

According to the post, starting on August 20, it will be adding and rotating all twelve of the event-exclusive Legendary items into the store over the course of the final week of the event for the regular Legendary skin cost.

"We need to be better at letting our players know what to expect from the various event structures in Apex Legends," adds the statement. "Over the last six months we've been learning a lot about operating a live service free-to-play game, and one of the take-aways from this week (beyond what was mentioned above) is that our messaging for expectations needs to be clearer. This is a different event structure than the Legendary Hunt from Season 1, and it will be different from planned future upcoming events. We're learning more each day on what works, what doesn't, and how to provide the best possible experiences and content to all of you.

"With Apex Legends it is very important to us that we don't sell a competitive advantage. Our goal has not been to squeeze every last dime out of our players, and we have structured the game so that all players benefit from those who choose to spend money - events like Legendary Hunt or Iron Crown exist so that we can continue to invest in creating more free content for all players. This week has been a huge learning experience for us and we're taking the lessons forward to continue bringing the best possible experience to all of you."

Apex Legends is available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. For more news, media, and information on the free battle royale game, click here.