Respawn Entertainment has vowed to keep the free-to-play battle-royale game 'Apex Legends' running for at least another “10 to 15 years.”
The EA-owned developer has opened its third development studio in Wisconsin, which will work with Respawn’s Los Angeles and Vancouver offices to ensure there is a new season of the title every 90 days.
Respawn's Vice President and 'Apex' General Manager, Greg Wilson, told GamesIndustry.biz: “Producing content on the scale and pace that Apex requires is no easy feat. So we are always working to bring in more talent, more experience, more ideas, more capabilities…”
Ryan Burnett, who is leading the new studio, said: "When I look at the Apex franchise, I think it’s one of the best out there.
"We’re best in class when you look at other battle royale competitors in terms of movement and gameplay. The other thing we do really well is there’s a deep story, lore, and history with all the Legends we have."
Respawn co-founder and CEO Vince Zampella commented: “There are some things we work on that take more than two years to get from beginning to end in-game.”
He added: “Team health is absolutely a top priority for us because we’re in this for the long haul. We believe in Apex as a franchise that’s going to be around for 10, 15 years or more, and we’re excited to make that happen. In order to do that, we can't just put everything all upfront, burn ourselves out."
The game's director Steven Ferreira added: “Building the live service of Apex is a constant cycle of trying new things and experimenting, and that’s what Wisconsin is going to give us – that capacity to do more of that, pushing into new area like Legend classes and trying to do things we haven’t done before.
“There’s two kinds of key pieces there: one is obviously the capacity part of it and helping us to build up our team structure to do that, but the other is new perspectives and ideas. Folks with different experiences and different backgrounds are something we’re always looking at.”
Season 16, Revelry, arrived in February.