Is Apex Legends Dying? – The State of Play in 2022

The history of Apex Legends is quite interesting, and it is an aspect that cannot be ignored when we ask: is Apex Legends dying?. Apex was released at a very interesting time when Fortnite was in its prime; a battle royale game that definitely dominated the genre with its cartoony graphics, easy pick-up and play gameplay, and most importantly, it was free to play.

While there were lots of battle royale games that tried to mirror what Fortnite was doing, doing all kinds of announcements and hyping people up for their release, there was one that stood out from the crowd, and that was Apex Legends. In 2019, Apex Legends came out of nowhere, and it immediately drew the attention of everyone who was looking to play a battle royale game that had a more realistic look.

While Fortnite had its building mechanic, Apex had something unique at the time, and that was the option to play various characters that had unique abilities; it was pretty much an Overwatch battle royale, something that a lot of people wanted. On top of that, it had incredible graphics and fantastic controls, and the gunplay felt amazing too.

Credit: EA

Lots of streamers enjoyed the game, and it was one of the most viewed games on Twitch for quite some time. However, after a couple of months, that viewership was dwarfed, and so was its incredibly big player base.

Is Apex Legends Dying?

Considering that Apex Legends appeared in the heat of the moment when battle royale was the most popular genre, it should come as no surprise that it attracted a lot of players, in the beginning, only to be left by the majority just a few months after its release. Is Apex dying? To answer that question, we should look at the most important metrics which can be served as the deciding factor:

• Player count
• Average Viewership
• Tournaments
• Update frequency

Player Count

Is Apex Legends dying is something that players will often ask themselves when they tend to face slightly longer queue times or when they see the same people in lobbies. While we are going to cover all the mentioned factors, the player count is probably the most important one. Because even if other factors are high, that does not make the game alive for those who want to play it.

While we do not have the exact number of active players, there are certain sources that try to keep the best track of it. The issue of having an accurate number for the player count is because Apex Legends is playable on multiple platforms, and even on PC, which is the main platform, there are different launchers for the game.

According to the site PlayerCount, the number of players that are playing Apex at the time of writing this article is 1,036,012, which is a gigantic number, but we do not know if it is accurate or not. The best way to see answer the question “Is Apex dying?” is if we look at the Steam charts.

On Steam, Apex Legends was released in November 2020, and its peak for concurrent players was 117,193. Of course, not everyone moved to Steam from its original platform which is Origin, so that is not the best measurement. However, today, in May of 2022, the concurrent peak is actually at an all-time high, with 411,183 concurrent players.

It seems that the release of Apex season 13 definitely brought interest to a lot of players, and according to player numbers from PlayerCount and Steam Charts, is Apex Legends dying? Definitely not. In fact, it seems that it is bigger than ever.

Average Viewership

While having players in the game is a great sign of life when it comes to video games, viewership on popular streaming platforms is another good indicator of how good a game is doing. After all, a game can be alive, but if there is no interest in it for viewership, it is bound to die out at one point.

On its release, Apex Legends had a whopping average viewership of 218,000 on Twitch. After four months, that viewership was dwarfed to 16,500 viewers. Now, this was probably the first time players asked themselves, “Is Apex dying”?

However, the viewership slowly began to increase, and at one point, it hit an average of 125,000 in 2021. Since then, the viewership has been dipping and climbing from 60,000 to 90,000, which surprisingly makes it the most-watched game in the battle royale category. Another sign that the game is still growing strong!

Are there any tournaments?

Even if there are players who enjoy playing and watching the game, people are bound to quit at one point if there is no esports for it in today’s era of video games. Luckily there are plenty of Apex Legends tournaments on the horizon. The biggest one is certainly the Apex Legends Global Series, where the prize pool is $2,000,000! Because there are a lot of tournaments being played, there is also a huge interest in Apex Legends betting, which is especially exciting due to the genre of the game.

Is the game getting regular updates?

Lastly, we are at our last factor; even if it seems quite evident that Apex Legends is not going anywhere, let us talk about its update frequency. For those who play the game, there have been a couple of big releases recently.

Apex season 13 is probably the least interesting one, even if it introduced a bit of a revamp of the competitive ranked ladder, which a lot of players are still getting used it. These changes ultimately make the game feel more like a battle royale instead of a chaotic game where everyone slaughters each other in the first minute of the game, which is a great change! There is also a new champion, Newcastle, which brings a unique defensive playstyle.

The biggest update so far!

Of course, we are saving the best for last, and the definitive sign that will answer your big question is Apex Legends dying, and that is the fact that the game is now available on mobile devices.

That is right, earlier in May, Apex Legends Mobile was released, and the port is as beautiful as the original. It plays gracefully, and it is bound to bring in a ton of new players. While it is its separate universe, which we can see from the fact that it already has an exclusive mobile-only character, Fade, those who have their first experience of Apex Legends on their phone are probably going to check out the game on their PC or their console, which will make them grow even more.