This third studio will be opening in Madison, Wisconsin.
Text: Respawn Entertainment. Madison, Wisconsin Image: Grey background, silhouette of the state of Wisconsin.

It seems both Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment plan to keep Apex Legends going for a very, very long time.

A third Respawn studio is soon to open in Madison, Wisconsin. This third studio will initially focus solely on Apex Legends for the foreseeable future. This studio will be led by industry veteran Ryan Burnett. Burnett has been in game development for about two decades now. He previously worked at Raven Software and Epic Games.

It's possible that this new Madison location will help other Respawn teams with non-Apex projects in the future. For now, they are dedicated to working on new content for the popular battle royale title. Game director Steven Ferreira is hopeful for a long future ahead for Apex Legends and shared as such with GamesIndustry.biz.

"There are some things we work on that take more than two years to get from beginning to end in the game," he says. "For example, 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.

"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."​
This new Madison location should hopefully lessen the workload on the other Respawn studios, allowing them to focus a bit more on non-Apex projects. One such project that is actually coming out quite soon is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Respawn is also known for having created the Titanfall series. Whether we'll ever see a Titanfall 3 still remains to be seen.

News of this new Respawn studio comes in the same month EA fired over 200 Apex Legends' QA testers from a Baton Rouge location. GamesIndustry.biz did inquire about the move to open a new studio in the wake of those layoffs.

When asked about the impact of those layoffs, which were at EA's separate Baton Rouge department, and its relation to the Wisconsin opening, an EA spokesperson did not fully address the situation. Instead, they simply stated that the company is focused on “how we can scale development across all of the Apex Legends teams to serve our global player base.”
Apex Legends just recently celebrated its fourth anniversary since its release. It also recently entered into its 16th season of updates and content.