Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella has issued an apology for the shocking comments made by two Apex Legends developers on Reddit over the weekend.
Things got pretty heated in the game's Reddit community after executive producer Drew McCoy went on a mini-rant, claiming that he remembers the good old days when players weren't "complete ass-hats to developers." And a player would ask him if he also remembers when devs weren't "money grabbing f**ks that scammed their players."
In response, McCoy said that he "found the d**k I was talking about" adding that he only read the first and last sentences of the comment and that "this kind of garbage doesn't warrant a reply."
Things escalated from there, with community manager Jay Frechette joining in. "It's fine for you all to call us liars, full of shit, and other personal attacks when we communicate an apology and update to the event but we're 'immature' when we call people out on it," he declared.
McCoy, though, wasn't done yet and went on to refer to players as "freeloaders."
The developers have not made any apologies for their outbursts but Zampella has done so on their behalf in a tweet posted to his account on Monday.
"I will always stand behind the team here at Respawn and support them on speaking out against some of the toxic and nasty comments being directed at them, including everything from death threats to comments aimed at their family and loved ones," he wrote.
"But we shouldn't contribute to it when we do comment, and add to the very thing we want to prevent. We need to lead by example. Last week we didn't do that, and going forward we will be better."
There's very little McCoy and Frechette could say in the way of a defense here and they probably shouldn't try. This sort of thin-skinned unprofessionalism was certainly not expected from such prominent figures in the gaming community and should have never found its way online.
Of course, developers are humans too and they do feel. But how much better are you if you go as low as responding to fan abuse in such a public manner?