Respawn Opens Third Studio to Keep Apex Legends Running for Another '10 to 15 Years' | Push Square

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Apex Legends developer Respawn has opened a third studio in order to keep the popular battle royale franchise running for another «10 to 15 years». The new studio is located in Madison, Wisconsin.

While it may contribute to other Respawn products in the future, this third studio (the first two being located in Los Angeles and Vancouver) will primarily focus on Apex Legends in order to ensure a consistent and, most importantly, sustainable production pipeline. The studio will be led by Ryan Burnett, who has worked previously at Epic Games as director of engine production, in addition to a lengthy 14-year career at Call of Duty Studio, Raven Software.

In an in-depth interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Daniel Suarez, senior VP of operations at Respawn, says that «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 and not be ready to do that in the long haul.»

Apex Legends runs a new season of content every 90 days, so consistency (as well as enough of a production runway) is key in order to make that timeline realistic. It takes a lot longer than you might expect for new characters to be introduced to the game, as Suarez notes, «a Legend takes us about a year to a year and a half to get into the game. So we're working on things well in advance.»

This news comes just a few short weeks after parent company EA laid off more than 200 Apex Legends QA testers in an unscheduled Zoom call, which caused some fans to question the future of the game.

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