T-Pain Also Wants Players to Stop Harassing Apex Legends Developers
Social media has provided gamers an opportunity to connect with developers in a way that would have been inconceivable just a decade or two ago. Unfortunately, many have abused that opportunity, using it instead to harass others, including Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment. Earlier this month, Respawn put out a statement defending its employees and pledging to "take appropriate action" against those that harass members of its staff. Rapper and longtime gamer T-Pain has now weighed in on the harassment on his own Twitter account, blasting those that have been attacking Respawn's employees.
"Bro y'all have to f**king chill out. It's a f**king game my dude. Play something else if you hate it so much bro. Walk away from your pc/console if you've become so consumed by a game that you feel the need to threaten the ppl that work hard to make it. Chill bro," T-Pain wrote on Twitter.
While video games evoke a lot of passion from players, it's important to remember that the games we love are made by real people. Video game development is a difficult and time-consuming process, and burn out is a very real risk for employees. Harassment online makes these employees much less likely to want to engage with the fan community as well. Hopefully T-Pain's comments will provide some much-needed perspective for those that mistreat developers and their employees online.
At the end of the day, those that work on video games are in the business because they have a passion for the medium, and they want to make games that people love. Harassment of employees is only going to push people away from the video game industry, or it might convince them not to get into development at all.
Apex Legends is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the game right here.
Are you disappointed by the harassment issues at Respawn? Do you think developers need to take more steps to protect employees? Let us know in the comments or share directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
[H/T: Games Radar+]