Apex Legends came out two hours late so a developer could finalise his daughter's adoption
"Apex launched at a strange time, because Respawn prioritised my family first"
It turns out when Apex Legends came out last year, Respawn released it a couple of hours later than planned. This wasn't down to server issues or last-minute bugs, though. The battle royale's launch was pushed back by two hours because the studio's former lead programmer had a court appointment to finalise his daughter's adoption on the very same morning.
"So, the Apex Legends launch was weirdly late in the day - lunchtime PST - evening in Europe. Not when you’d expect," said former Respawn dev, Jon Shiring, at the start of a Twitter thread.
"We had planned it for that morning, and then my court appointment to finalize my adoption came through - the court had picked February 4th at 10am - the same time as the Apex launch. I panicked. Since I ran the ops and online services team for the game, this was bad."
Thankfully, Respawn seems full of nice folks who were prepared to push back the launch time, so he could get to his court hearing and hightail it back to the office - and celebrate with the team, of course.
"That’s why Apex launched at a strange time, around lunch on February 4th, 2019. Because Respawn prioritized my family first."
This sounds like a pretty fair reason to delay a game launch to me. Besides, being two hours late certainly didn't seem to have a negative impact on Apex Legends' start to life. Sure, it had a few teething problems as most new games do. But Respawn still successfully announced and released Apex on the same day, and even saw one million users sign up to play within 24 hours.
What a throwback. On Feb 4th 2019 I remember messaging my pals to ask if they knew anything about this new surprise battle royale. Now, a year and half on, Apex is in its sixth season - and they've finally gotten around to nerfing Wraith's Naruto run.
If you fancy hopping into a few Apex matches over the next week or so, don't forget the Aftermarket Collection event is currently taking place, with some funky cosmetics and a new game mode to boot.
