Akshually it was Respawn that wanted to make Apex Legends. There’s some interview with Jon Shiring aka slothy somewhere where basically he said that they had to beg EA to make Apex Legends instead of Titanfall3 as EA wanted guaranteed revenue from an established IP (Titanfall) as opposed to something new (Apex Legends) that might flop…

EA being the good guy in that case does feel weird though, haha