In the battle royale shooter Apex Legends there was a great PR stunt by the developers. They created the character Forge, only to kill him off immediately. Now it is said that this was mainly done to mislead dataminers. Months in advance, deliberately false information was spread.
This was the stunt: In January 2020, Apex Legends introduced a new playable character: Forge, a boxer.
He got the full treatment: a backstory, cool images, blog posts. He looked absolutely real.
It was particularly authentic because dataminers had already found this character “Forge” in a patch in November 2019 and leaked a full list of his supposed abilities.
It was actually clear: This would be the new legend for Season 4 of Apex Legends, which would start in February. There was no big surprise left: Even the abilities were already known from the relevant leaks.
All just a trick
This was the twist: But in the “debut interview” of Forge, a trailer, he was stabbed in the back by Revenant, another new legend.
That was pretty cool at the time and attracted a lot of attention for the game.
Planned for months to mislead dataminers
This is what the developers say now: In an interview with Dotesports, the developers say:
The idea originated because they were frustrated with dataminers who had already “stolen the secrets and shown them to the public” in 2019:
Honestly, it started as a funny way to mislead dataminers. At the time, we felt they had already decrypted our next legend and spoiled the surprise for us.
We actually intentionally leaked the wrong concept art and details of Forge in a patch to create a breadcrumb trail until the moment we revealed him.
Jason McCord
The design director Jason McCord says: That was pretty crazy. He can’t remember any game that did something like that.
With the stunt, Respawn is visibly satisfied: It is said that the “leak” about Forge had confused dataminers and distracted them from the actual trail.
The stunt with Forge was so well-prepared and successful that some players still believe that Forge will return as a playable legend in Apex Legends.
But McCord says: “Forge is super-dead.” They didn’t even design a model for Forge.
The poor boxer Forge was apparently only intended as bait for dataminers from the beginning and ended up being a really clever PR stunt for Apex Legends.
- What kind of horror Revenant can unleash on poor Twitch streamers, we will consider in this article.
- What is currently happening in Apex Legends can be found in the article about the new update.
