Is Apex Legends dying in popularity? (2023 Update)

With the new release of Apex Legends, season 14, and the next Legend, Vantage, Respawn Entertainment is in a fair effort to drum up the hype once again. Even after a few years of being released, it has captivated millions of players around the world trying to secure its spot among the giants of battle royale games.

But whenever you are out of your comfort zone, facing an issue, or irritated while playing Apex Legends, this question could suddenly pop into your head, "is Apex Legends becoming a dead game?" Well, no fixed answer can satisfy this as of now. But if your curiosity led you here, we've got some clues that are worth your time to determine an answer.

Initial Success Story

Apex Legends has such an inspiring story about its history as it entered the competition of the battle royale genre during the time of showing the rivals' great leaps of success in the gaming industry. While most of these games of the same genre were trying to mimic the vibe same as Fortnite, which was the dominant, Apex Legends emerged as a fast-paced, FPS, and free-to-play, hero shooting game with unique gameplay.

Unlike other battle royale games, it did not merely follow the same ideology, instead, the initial release of the game featured a roster of eight Legends who own an interesting backstory from Apex Games, along with distinctive abilities to combat in 3v3 squads in an arena. These playable characters are originally appearing in Titanfall Universe and its lore builds a fascinating, ever-evolving relationship between them in a narrative style inside the game through voice lines.

Besides these characters, the gunplay, impressive graphics, and outstanding controls truly delighted the game lovers who could only conquer the arena with rapid movements that give a rush of adrenaline, undeniably a thing that players love.

Well, was it able to grab the spotlight out of other competitors during the time of release? Just after a week, Apex Legends could surpass 25 million players and 2 million active players, marking an amazing milestone in its history. In April 2021, when season 9 was around the corner, Respawn announced that it surpassed 100 million players, marking another milestone and being one of the most-played video games of all time.

By the time of writing this article, player numbers in different sources have proven a visible interest in players with the season 15, Eclipse, release. But, would these numbers reflect the truth about the question "will Apex Legends die?"

Is Apex Legends truly dying?

Almost all giants in the gaming industry put in more effort to make the games look fresh, alive, and relevant utilizing many strategies and tactics. It's especially true for games like Apex Legends and Respawn constantly adding new things, a new Legend for each season, cosmetic items, map updates, etc., to keep its momentum. Making its first appearance when the battle royale genre was reaching its heights in popularity gives no surprise that it captivated millions of players in the very beginning.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of reasons like technical issues, dreary updates, lack of anti-cheat measures, etc., that can possibly frustrate a particular gaming community resulting in them departing from the game, eventually causing its death.

Has this any aspect posed a risk that signals a red light in losing interest in Apex Legends? Well, not only just stats, some facts speak louder than we think. Let's find out!

Game updates and releases

Constant game updates and releases are undoubtedly one of the characteristics of an ever-evolving game signalling that it still breathes. Respawn Entertainment has released 14 seasons and maintains a roster of 22 playable characters by the time of writing this article. Also, players receive patches regularly to improve the gameplay and to introduce new events associated with the season.

However, the Apex community noticed a huge fall in Apex Legends' popularity, especially in Twitch views, since season 13 was released. Garret, a popular content creator of Apex Legends, confirmed this in one of his posts on Twitter. He further assumed that the ranked changes in season 13 could have negatively affected the gameplay which led to a controversy in the Apex community.

But proving that as a temporary shift, the latest release season 15 with a bunch of updates in maps along with a new character, is receiving positive vibes from the Apex community. Of course, constant changes can positively impact the player base while a simple change could adversely affect the game in the future, which may not happen instantly.

Apex Legends Mobile

One of the biggest and much-anticipated updates, Apex Legends Mobile was launched recently by Respawn Entertainment, making a remarkable success by earning nearly $5 million through the first week of monetization. Putting aside its huge fan base on PC, this is one of the stunning milestones that is a sign of a positive vibe in its continuous growth.

Live player count

Player count is one of the popular metrics to measure the health of games in terms of the number of players who are currently alive and playing the game for a given moment. If you are in search of a service that helps to track this data, plenty of sources are available online that claim to provide the same.

Determining the live player count of Apex Legends is questionable as it's available on multiple platforms like PC, console, etc. So, the reliability and accuracy of such data are of controversial nature, unless the method of measuring the number of players is not ambiguous. However, besides the numbers that Respawn announced, fans tend to refer to a few specific sources to get this data.

Though Apex Legend is available in both Steam and Origin, being one of the top launchers owning the biggest library of games, Steam provides some related topics about the player count. But still, these stats do not yield the best amount as Origin is the original platform of Apex Legends.

Apex Legends has been officially available on Steam since November 2020. Since the release it clearly shows that the number of concurrent players has not declined over time and reached its peak, over half of a million, on the day after the latest release of new season 14, Hunted.

So does this data imply that Apex Legends dying? Definitely not, but more importantly still emerging more than ever it does and it's actually happening.

Average concurrent viewers

Counting on the average concurrent player count of top online streaming services is also an ideal indicator to determine whether a particular game is alive or declining towards a certain point which makes it a dead game eventually.

During the time of release, Apex Legends could own 218,000 average viewers which is the highest of all time on Twitch, one of the most popular live-streaming platforms available for gamers. But this number was dropped afterwards leaving the fans hesitant where they probably would've asked "is Apex Legends dying?". Nevertheless, at some point when it hits 16,150, which is of course the lowest, the average number of viewers began to rise with ups and downs.

However, these numbers clearly show that Apex Legends has not yet failed in its attempts to capture more fans and streamers.

Google Trends

Another reliable source, Google Trends, shows how interest in the game has evolved worldwide throughout a given period. Most Asian and North American countries are the top regions that show high interest in Apex Legends which also have a high-density of population.

Global gaming events

Having plenty of global tournaments organized to put top online competitors into a single stage is one of the interesting facts for a multiplayer game like Apex Legends indicating its health at an optimum level. The biggest and most popular esports tournament, Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) Championship, offers a huge prize pool for the winners.

The Split Two playoffs, one of the phases in the latest format of the ALGS and were held May 1, 2023, marking a breakthrough by surpassing records of average viewership in all EA's titles. This is another clue indicating that Apex Legends is one of the ever-growing AAA games at the moment. But who knows what could happen in the next second?