- Respawn Entertainment supports Pride month’s cause with a series of statements
- Parent company EA has not issued any such official statements
- This might signify a rift between the two companies
Apex Legends and Battlefield developer Respawn Entertainment issues statements about Pride month despite parent company EA’s silence.
Respawn Speaks Out amid EA’s Silence
With the start of June comes the start of Pride month, a time dedicated to awareness for people of the LGBT community. Often, corporations express their support for the community by launching various events or simply changing their social media profile pictures and banners to the colors of the civic movement.
One such company is Apex Legends and Battlefield developer Respawn Entertainment, which made its position clear on the issues surrounding LGBT people on both its official channels and the accounts of its employees. The studio does this despite parent company EA’s silence on the matter, but Respawn’s official statement reads “we strive to be inclusive in the games we create and how we treat our employees and our players.” The company posted this along with an image of some of the LGBT characters from Apex Legends.
This Signifies a Rift between EA and Respawn
Although the tweet has a good message, it also alludes to the friction that seems to be more and more prominent in the relationship between Respawn and its parent company EA. The latter has been quiet on the matter, but Respawn Entertainment holds a firm position with the company’s head Vince Zampella tweeting an explanation that the studio “has grown on the principles of diversity, equality, and inclusion”.
Zampella’s words were echoed by VP of franchise creative for The Sims Lyndsay Pearson, who tweeted: “Women’s rights are human rights. Transgender rights are human rights. Maxis and @TheSims value diversity, equality and inclusion in our core and we strive to bring this to life through our teams and our work.”
These Respawn employees’ tweets followed an internal meeting at EA that addressed the company’s silence on issues like trans rights and the right to abortion. Rumors have it that many employees have been frustrated with EA’s lack of statements on the issues, especially on the eve of Pride month. EA upper management has responded by saying that trans rights and the right to abortion don't have enough internal support throughout the company for it to take a public stance.
This did not sit well with many Respawn employees and according to some reports, Respawn employees threatened to walk out over EA’s unspecified plans for Pride month.
It has to be said that having a neutral stance on the above-mentioned issues may indeed be the case for EA. Furthermore, a lot of companies are often pushed to adopt a stance due to social pressure. This often leads to the issue statements that are there only for PR. After all, we all know that the banners will go down at the end of Pride month and we will not hear anything about the issues until next year.
