Game studios have had a challenging time transitioning to working-from-home due to the pandemic. AGDC surveyshowed that roughly 33% of developers had their games delayed due to the pandemic. And the produce of that, more often than is comfortable, is development crunch. Such is the case with a GlassDoor review forApex Legendsdeveloper Respawn. A heavily critical review was submitted that has now even led to a response fromApex Legendsdirector Chad Grenier.

The GlassDoor review, which claims to come from a currentRespawngame developer, alleges 12-13 hour days asApex Legendspushed to maintain the same tempo of content releases it had pre-pandemic. “I feel extremely stressed and burn out trying to keep our seasonal releases on the same aggressive timeline,” the user writes. They go on to say that there’s “no attention to employee health during this period,” with conflicting messages regarding taking care of personal health while also pushing to meet deadlines.

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Grenier does try and clarify what they see as inaccuracies in the GlassDoor review of Respawn’sApex Legendsteam, but they also acknowledge issues. Grenier’s closing thoughts serve as a good summary of what his message is, which is, “Are we perfect? No, of course not. Does Respawn and EA care more about the health of the team than the game and its profits? Absolutely, even during non-pandemic times.”

Grenier goes on to describe an environment on theApex Legendsteam where employees are encouraged to “speak up” if they’re unable to complete their work withoutcrunching. While Grenier doesn’t say that it crunch is altogether avoided, he says he isn’t averse to delaying a necessary. He also says employees only have to work  “as much as they can” and that employees have unlimited time off for their physical or mental wellbeing.

However, Grenier doesn’t deny the possibility of one of his employees working 12-13 hour days onApex Legends. In fact, he seems to insinuate long hours are common. Like otherstudios accused of crunch culture including Naughty Dog, Grenier says theApex Legendsteam is “filled with a bunch of rock stars and do-ers.” “Nobody wants to be the one who got a feature delayed. Nobody wants to let their teammates down, or let the fans down.” It sounds a lot like the kind of pressure leadership puts on workers that leads to the crunch culture described in the GlassDoor review.

To Grenier’s credit, he says that “all of us leaders on the team have learned to better look” for those who may be overdoing it and are checking in “more regularly with the developers.” They’ll even proactively push back features rather than waiting for someone to raise their hand. Efforts are being made to do better, but Grenier says that theGlassDoor reviewvery well could be an employee’s honest feelings.

Apex Legendsis available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.