Apex Legends blew up the hero shooter genre and shook up battle royales in a permanent way; but where is the game headed at this point?
Few games have had as explosive a launch as Apex Legends. The game was effectively shadow-dropped and instantly became one of the biggest titles in its genre. Though it didn’t “kill” Fortnite as some predicted, and didn’t necessarily even slow down its growth, it did carve out a niche of its own.
But where did Apex go from there? And where is the game headed at this point? Here’s everything there is to know about Apex Legends’ history and future.
Apex Legends is a hero shooter developed by Respawn Entertainment, the creators of the Titanfall series.
The game launched in 2019 with a surprising shadow drop. At the time, Fortnite was enjoying incredible mainstream visibility both online and even across mainstream media. Late-night TV shows, morning news programs, and radio DJs around the world were discussing this incredibly popular video game that teenagers were obsessing over.
It’s no surprise that an enormous publisher like EA Games would make a push to imitate its success. It did so in a surprising way, however.
The game launched on February 4, 2019, with no marketing beforehand. Instead, EA Games worked directly with some of the biggest Fortnite-focused streamers at the time, including Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. These Fortnite streamers were reportedly paid millions of dollars to showcase the competition, which proved to be a major success.
Official statements claimed that Apex Legends garnered millions of unique players within a day of its launch, and 25 million within its first week. In 2022, EA stated that the game had surpassed $2 billion in revenue throughout its lifespan.
Apex Legends combines gameplay elements from both the battle royale and hero shooter genres. The title is a first-person shooter where players are typically placed into a team of three. Teams air drop into a level that shrinks as the game progresses, and need to procure weapons and armor on site.
While this sounds very similar to Fortnite and PUBG: Battlegrounds, Apex Legends set itself apart by folding in hero shooter-style characters. Each playable character has a handful of abilities that can be used to help allies or harm enemies. These abilities varied wildly, ranging from tracking enemies’ footsteps to healing allies to launching one’s entire team into the sky to reposition.
Even in comparison to Fortnite, this made for a fast-paced gameplay experience. This was complemented by other mechanics.
Movement in Apex Legends was set apart by the ability to quickly scale obstacles, crouch, and slide down hills and stairs. This makes firefights quick and frantic.
Not only that, but the experience of allies being downed was significantly more dynamic. Downed players weren’t just forced to crawl; they had a shield they could use defensively or to help allies on offense. When a player is killed, they can be revived if allies interact with their body quickly enough and then interact with a respawn beacon. This mechanic wasn’t present in competing battle royales, and rewarded players for sticking around until the end of a game.
All this made for a highly engaging experience that maintained a strong place in the battle royale space.
Though Apex Legends enjoyed an explosive launch and has generated billions of dollars in revenue, the game’s popularity has waned over time. EA Games doesn’t offer exact player count figures, nor do PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo. However, tracking services for Steam suggest that Apex Legends suffered a marked decline in its player count across 2023 and 2024.
The game hit an all-time peak on Steam in February 2023 with an average player count of 257,416 throughout the month, and a peak of 624,473, per Steam Charts. However, those numbers steeply declined in 2023, with those losses continuing into 2024 and 2025.
The exact reason is unclear, though the game has endured multiple major controversies.
Fans have long complained about the game’s loot box system, which forces completionists to spend a great deal of cash in order to acquire all the game’s premium skins. Complaints regarding hacking also came to a head publicly in 2024 when a hacker commandeered an Apex Legends esports event by injecting into competitors’ PCs.
Respawn also overhauled how the game’s battle pass system works, breaking up seasons into multiple parts while billing players for each part.
The game’s long-term future as one of the world’s most popular competitive games may be uncertain, but despite some questions, the game still remains one of the most popular live-service games in the world.
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