EA Releases Patent for Apex Legends Ping System to Other Developers

EA makes five patented accessibility-related technologies available to other developers. These include the Ping system from Apex Legends and options for colorblind people.

In a so-called Patent Pledge, EA agrees not to take any steps against developers who use techniques from the aforementioned five patents. These are patents that relate to options or features in games that can help players with disabilities. EA hopes that other developers will adopt the techniques to make games more inclusive.

The most famous technique released by the publisher is the Ping system from Apex Legends. Players can communicate with it through audio and visual commands and signals, all of which are input from a controller. According to EA, that helps people with disabilities who have trouble communicating. The US patent office on Tuesday granted a patent for this to EA under the name Contextually aware communications system in video games.

Another patent released by EA focuses on a technical solution for color blindness. Its source code has been released via GitHub. The other three patents also relate to making games more accessible to players with vision problems and, according to EA, they are already widely used in EA games from the FIFA and Madden NFL franchises. It involves techniques that detect and adjust colours, brightness and contrast, to improve the visibility of colors of comparable brightness.

Apex Legends