Apex Legends changing name of Inauguration Ship to avoid confusion
Respawn Entertainment/EAA Respawn Entertainment developer has confirmed that, with the next Apex Legends update releasing during the week of January 17, the name of the Inauguration Ship Season 8 teaser will be changed in order to avoid confusion surrounding the upcoming United States Presidential Inauguration.
With Season 8 of Apex Legends quickly approaching, teasers for it have been starting to crop-up in-game, with one of the most interesting being the Inauguration Ship seen floating above the map.
The name, however, has nothing to do with the upcoming US Presidential Inauguration, which is occurring on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 – so in order to avoid confusion with that major event, the developers have decided to change the name of it to the Ceremony Ship.
Hmm, what's this then? pic.twitter.com/D8ijSC7a6w
— Apex Legends News (@alphaINTEL) January 15, 2021
According to Ryan Rigney, the director of communications over at Respawn Entertainment, the decision was made to avoid people thinking that the developers were “doing commentary about current events,” and considering how close we are to the actual inauguration, it makes sense.
Rigney added that they didn’t initially mean to cause confusion and that the name “Inauguration Ship” was something that they had picked out a while ago and it just happened to line up with current events.
“Better safe than sorry,” he tweeted.
Small note for the latest Apex patch, next week we're changing the name of the ‘inauguration ship' to the Ceremony Ship.
We didn't want folks incorrectly assuming we were doing commentary about current events—it's just a name we'd picked out a while back. Better safe than sorry!
— Ryan K. Rigney (@RKRigney) January 16, 2021
In terms of what will actually be edited in-game, Rigney confirmed that the change won’t be too significant, stating that he believes the only thing of note will be a text file that appeared when pinging the ship in-game. Of course, the name change means that any new pieces of lore in Apex will refer to the ship with the appropriate title as well.
Right now, the Ceremony Ship is one of the most notable hints for Season 8 occurring in-game, aside from the new abilities teasers that have been found, which belong to the upcoming Legend named Fuse.
It’ll be interesting to see if anything else comes out of the ship before the new season’s start in early February.
