A Respawn Entertainment developer confirmed that, with the next Apex Legends update released during the week of January 17, the name of the inaugural ship’s 8th season teaser will be changed to avoid confusion over the next United States presidential inauguration.
With season 8 of Apex Legends rapidly approaching, teasers began to emerge in the 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 taking place on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 – so, to avoid confusion with that big event, the developers decided to change his name for the Ceremony Ship.
Hmm, what is this then? pic.twitter.com/D8ijSC7a6w
– Apex Legends News (@TitanfallBlog) January 15, 2021
According to Ryan Rigney, the director of communications at Respawn Entertainment, the decision was made to prevent people from thinking that the developers were “commenting on current events” and, considering how close we are to the actual opening, makes sense.
Rigney added that they initially did not intend to cause confusion and that the name “Nauguration” was something they had chosen some time ago and that it was in line with current events.
“Better safe than sorry,” he tweeted.
A little note for the last Apex patch, next week we will change the name of the ‘inauguration ship’ to Ceremony Boat.
We didn’t want people to incorrectly assume that we were commenting on current events – it’s just a name that we chose some time ago. Better safe than sorry!
– Ryan K. Rigney (@RKRigney) January 16, 2021
In terms of what will actually be edited in the game, Rigney confirmed that the change will not be very significant, stating that he believes the only thing worth noting will be a text file that appeared when pinging the ship in the game. Of course, the name change means that any new Apex history will also refer to the ship with the appropriate title.
At the moment, the Ceremony Ship is one of the most notable hints for Season 8 taking place in the game, in addition to the new skill teasers that have been found, which belong to the next Legend called Fuse.
It will be interesting to see if anything else leaves the ship before the start of the new season in early February.