
Apex Legends’ momentum isn’t slowing down yet.
The new battle royale title continues to attract players at an astounding rate and is still growing its lead among the most-played games in the world. This was reflected in the latest set of numbers announced by EA Games on its website, with a whopping 25 million players signing in over the last week and a peak of over 2 million concurrent players.
These numbers are a continuation of what was already an extraordinary debut for the game. Apex Legends saw over 2.5 million play within the first 24 hours of its launch. In its first three days, over 10 million had joined the fight.
At face value, those numbers are enough to turn heads. But when stacked head-to-head with more established gaming staples, they are even more impressive. Fortnite, the leader of the battle royale genre, saw just 10 million downloads in its first week and 2 million concurrent players is a number that games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have never come close to reaching.
Accompanying those player counts have been massive viewership numbers on Twitch, spurred on by regular play from popular streamers including Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “shroud” Grzesiek. The first ever Apex Legends tournament, hosted by Twitch Rivals, drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers across multiple channels.
That said, Apex Legends still has quite a bit of work to do if it is looking to unseat Fortnite as the top game in the battle royale genre. Fortnite’s total player count was over 200 million as of November 2018 according to Bloomberg, and had over 78.3 million different players per Gamesindustry.biz. Its concurrent player record currently stands at 8.3 million.
Still, Apex Legends is off to a roaring start. Even if it doesn’t overtake Fortnite, the game has been a great success already.
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