'They're just rumours, innit' say Apex Legends developers on datamining

Rumours have been churning around data-mined discoveries in Apex Legends, only to be quashed last night by developers Respawn Entertainment. Or not quashed, as such. But they have said, to paraphrase, 'look these are rumours ok, you'll get your battle pass soon plz calm down'.

Respawn's statement also follows Origin prematurely showing some users adverts for Season One, featuring a new mobility-focused hero called Octane and a battle pass that costs 950 Apex Coins. Which seems a tad more concrete than rumour, really.

I'll get back to Octane in a moment, but first here's the dev response in full.

Respawn will be "providing details on Season 1, Battle Pass, and the next Legend very soon", though encourage everyone to treat the rumours they're reading as exactly that. People had been combing through Apex's data files, digging up data on wall-running, NPCs and flamethrowers. It was all rather exciting, so long as you didn't think too hard about how datamining can turn up hangovers from previous stages of development as easily as upcoming additions. And that Respawn had already said they'd tried wall-running and didn't like it:

"There’s lots of stuff that has been datamined from Apex since launch and is swirling around the Internet. We know this stuff is fun to dig up and speculate about, but you should not treat any of that info as a source of truth. There’s stuff in there that is very old, or things we’ve tried in the past and cut -- remember our design process is to prototype and play lots of ideas -- and some of it may be things we’re still building for Apex Legends. Finding this stuff by no means confirms that it’ll ever come out. At best you should treat any posts about this as a rumor and the real info will come from us when we’re ready to show off what’s coming next."

When it comes to Octane, confirmation of his existence from multiple sources is hard to refute. This supposed leak showing his abilities, however, is a bit more suspect. Certain ability details corroborate with data-mined files, but that doesn't mean they'll take the exact form the leak purports they will. (Though do go read Guidesman Ollie's Octane analysis if you're curious.)

We'll have you "grinding on that Battle Pass" soon, reiterate the devs. They probably will and all.