Apex Legends

Gameplay

Apex Legends is an online multiplayer battle royale game featuring squads of three players using pre-made characters with distinctive abilities, called "Legends", similar to those of hero shooters. Alternate modes have been introduced allowing for up to four-player squads since the game's release. The game is free-to-play and monetized through microtransactions and loot boxes, which allow the player to spend both real money and in-game currency on cosmetic items, such as outfits for the Legends and new colors for weapons. Each character in the squad has a unique design, personality, and abilities that provide different playstyles to the team. Starting with Season 16, each legend is assigned to one of the five unique class styles: Assault, Skirmisher, Recon, Controller and Support.

Each match generally features twenty teams of three-player squads. Players can join friends in a squad or can be matched randomly with other players. Before the match, each player on the squad selects one of the 25 playable characters (as of season 19), with the exception that no character may be selected more than once by a squad.

All teams are then placed on an aircraft that passes over the game map. One player in each squad is the jumpmaster, selecting when the squad should skydive out of the aircraft and where to land with the concurrence of the other squad members. However, players are free to deviate from the squad's path.

Once on the ground, the squad can scavenge for weapons, armor, and other equipment that is scattered around buildings, or in crates randomly distributed around the map, while keeping an eye out for other squads. Apex Legends includes a nonverbal communication "ping system" which allows players to use their game controller to communicate to their squad certain directions, weapon locations, enemies, and suggested strategies. While the game offers movement options similar to other shooters, it includes some of the gameplay features of previous Titanfall games, such as the ability to climb over short walls, slide down inclined surfaces, and use zip-lines to traverse an area quickly.

Over time, the game's safe zone will reduce in size around a randomly-selected point on the map; players outside the safe zone take damage and may die if they do not reach the safe zone in time. This also confines squads to smaller spaces to force encounters. The last squad with any members left alive is crowned the "Apex Champions" of that match. Players who become knocked down in the course of a game can be revived by their squadmates. Should a player be killed completely, they can still be resurrected if their team member(s) collect their respawn banner, which appears at the place where they died, and bring it to one of several beacons on the island. The banner, however, must be collected within a time limit, before expiring and eliminating the player.

Seasons

Every new season is accompanied by the release of a new playable character, new weapons, or purchasable cosmetic items.

The game's first season began on March 19, 2019. Associated with seasons are time‑limited battle passes that reward players with new cosmetic items, provided that they complete in‑game challenges during the season. In addition to new cosmetic items, the release of a season adds changes to the map and additional gameplay elements.

Development

Developer Respawn Entertainment had previously developed Titanfall (2014) and its sequel Titanfall 2 (2016), both of which were published by Electronic Arts (EA) who eventually acquired Respawn Entertainment in 2017.

According to design director Mackey McCandlish, initial design on Apex Legends started before Titanfall 2 had shipped in 2016 and as of 2018 the entire Titanfall team at Respawn Entertainment was working on the project; however, executive producer Drew McCoy stated that work on the game did not begin until the spring of 2017. He also confirmed that the game had approximately 115 developers working on it, making it the studio's most labor-intensive project. Titanfall 2, by way of comparison, had around 85 developers.

According to McCoy, the studio was not sure what their next game would be after completing the post-release support for Titanfall 2, though they knew they wanted to keep making Titanfall games. As with the development of Titanfall 2, the studio broke into several small teams to create "action blocks", small game prototypes that showcase a gameplay element, a weapon, or similar feature of a game that would fit into a Titanfall sequel. One such "action block" was inspired by the success of the battle royale game genre led by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds; this prototype, which applied gameplay mechanics of previous Titanfall games in a battle royale format, was considered very successful and the studio decided to expand this model.

The designers decided that having the pilotable Titans (large mecha) from their previous games would not work well in a battle-royale setting and instead focused on creating strong character classes which felt appropriate for the Titanfall franchise. They also found that some maneuverability features of prior Titanfall titles, such as wall-running, would make gameplay too challenging in a battle royale format, as identifying the direction of threats would be too difficult.

Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella told VentureBeat that Apex Legends, as a live-service and free-to-play battle-royale game, was a new challenge for the studio and represented a new way for them of developing games. Their design philosophy was focused on "chasing the fun" and designing all the mechanics around team-based play, rather than solo play. The final decision on major design factors, such as the size of the teams, the number of teams and the size of the map, were all based on what felt "most fun" to the developers and were strongly guided by "gut feeling".

Esports

Shortly after Apex Legends' launch, it was seen as a potential esport competition, and Respawn had anticipated establishing events once the game had been established. As early as March 2019, various esport team sponsors began to assemble Apex Legends teams for these competitions. ESPN launched its EXP program to showcase esports events running alongside other ESPN-managed sporting events. The first such event was the EXP Pro-Am Apex Legends Exhibition, run on July 11, 2019, alongside the 2019 ESPY Awards. An EXP Invitational event with a $150,000 prize pool took place alongside the X Games Minneapolis 2019 from August 1 to 4, 2019. However, as a result of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings that occurred over that weekend, both ESPN and ABC opted to delay broadcast of the event out of respect for the victims of the shootings.

Respawn and EA announced the Apex Legends Global Series in December 2019, consisting of several online events and twelve live events during 2020 with a total US$3 million prize pool. The Global Series follows a similar approach as Fortnite Battle Royale by using multiple tiers of events to qualify players. Players will qualify for the Global Series through Online Tournaments. Top players and teams from these events will be invited to either regional Challenger events or to global Premier events, where the winners have a chance for a cash payout and invitations to one of the three major events. Three Major events will be held for one hundred teams to accumulate points in the Global Series to vie for placement in the final Major event as well as part of a US$500,000 prize pool. The fourth Major event had up to sixty teams competing for a portion of a US$1 million pool.

Year 2 of the ALGS began in September 2021.

Year 3 of the ALGS began on July 7, 2022, consisting of 40 teams around the world with a total US$2 million prize pool. The first place belongs to Darkzero Esports, with the prize of US$500,000.

Reception

Apex Legends received "generally favorable" reviews for most platforms according to review aggregator website Metacritic; the Nintendo Switch version received "mixed or average" reviews. Some publications, including Destructoid, Game Informer, GamesRadar+, and PC Gamer, called it one of the best takes on the battle royale genre thus far, and a worthy challenger to Fortnite Battle Royale's dominance of the genre.

Critics lauded the combat in Apex Legends. Destructoid referred to the gunplay as the best they had experienced in a battle royale thus far; however, they felt let down that some of the mechanics from the previous Titanfall games were not present. Javy Gwaltney of Game Informer, on the other hand, claimed that the omission of the Titans and other elements from previous Respawn games was not a problem and found the combat to be satisfying and the gunplay powerful. He added that the addition of heroes can make for more exciting combat than in other battle royale games.

Reviewers praised the non-verbal communication system in the game (known as the "ping system") with most considering it to be highly innovative. Polygon's Khee Hoon Chan opined that it "rendered voice chat with strangers largely unnecessary", and was emblematic of Apex Legends' accessibility and astuteness. Destructoid likewise enjoyed the mechanic, predicting that it would become the new norm for the video games industry in battle royale games. Rock Paper Shotgun called it the "gold standard for non-verbal communication in games" and noted that, while not an entirely new concept, Respawn Entertainment had refined the idea.

While Electronic Arts had received a U.S. patent for the ping system in 2021, the company announced that the ping system patent and four others related to game accessibility would be made available for free to game developers to use without fear of litigation starting in August 2021. IGN awarded the game score of 9 out of 10, summing up the review by saying "Apex Legends is squad-based battle royale done right, complete with cool heroes, a superb communication system, and polished mechanics"

Apex Legends received critical praise for the perceived diversity of its playable characters. Several characters are LGBTQ, including one non-binary character, though some reviewers felt that the nature of the game did not allow for a narrative which properly highlights this diversity.

Player-count and revenue

Eight hours after its launch, Apex Legends surpassed one million unique players, and reached 2.5 million unique players within 24 hours. In one week it achieved a total of 25 million players, with over 2 million peak concurrent, and by the end of its first month it reached 50 million players in total.

Within the first month of its release, Apex Legends made $92 million in revenue across all platforms, the highest amount earned by any free-to-play game during its month of launch.

As news and popularity of Apex Legends spread, analysts saw the game as something to challenge the dominance of Fortnite Battle Royale, and by February 8, 2019—four days after the game's release—EA had seen its largest growth in stock value since 2014 on the basis of Apex Legends' sudden success. Throughout April, the game was estimated to have earned $24 million in revenue, representing 74 percent less than the amount it earned during its first month, as the game failed to sustain the same level of interest generated by its launch.

In July 2019, EA told investors that the game had 8 to 10 million players a week and also credited Apex Legends with the company's recent upturn in live services earnings as their Q1 2020 financial results exceeded expectations. With the release of season 3 in October, Apex Legends reached a playerbase of 70 million people internationally and is believed to have earned $45 million in that month alone.

In February 2021, EA's CFO, Blake Jorgensen, confirmed that Apex Legends has surpassed $1 billion in revenue. In April, right before the release of the game's 9th season, Respawn announced that Apex Legends had reached a playerbase of over 100 million people and was expected to pull in $500 million that year.

In May 2022, it was stated in EA's earnings call that Apex Legends had surpassed $2 billion in revenue. On August 11, the game broke its all-time record for number of concurrent players on Steam with 510,286, according to stat-tracking database Steamcharts.

From February to December 2024, the game lost 70% of its Steam playerbase, potentially indicating waning interest. On an earnings call, EA noted that revenue had declined during 2024, and expectations needed to be adjusted downwards as a result.

Controversies

With the introduction of the 'Iron Crown' limited-time event in August 2019, the developers released several purchasable in-game cosmetic items. The vast majority of these items could only be acquired through purchasing loot boxes, and the most sought-after item (a cosmetic axe for one of the player characters) could only be purchased at an additional cost after first having obtained 24 other purchasable items. Players and media outlets decried that as a result of this transaction model, the cost of the most sought-after item was approximately $170 (or £130)—a price point which Forbes called "hilariously out of touch" and compared negatively to most other major microtransaction models in the industry.

This resulted in a negative backlash from the player community and industry journalists, particularly on Reddit, where members of the Apex Legends community forum traded insults with developers of the game with the increasingly strong language being used by both parties.

As a result, Respawn Entertainment apologized for what they agreed was unfair monetization and promised to allow players the chance to purchase cosmetic items directly (rather than rely on loot boxes), albeit at an increased price. Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella later apologized for members of the development team "crossing a line with their comments", while also defending that they stood up for themselves against alleged death threats and insults aimed at their family members.

Around July 4, 2021, unknown agents appeared to have broken EA and Respawn's server security as to change in-game messages to point to a website that purportedly was trying to "Save Titanfall". The site and messages spoke of the weak security that both Titanfall and Titanfall 2 servers had, leading to the games becoming unplayable due to the number of other hackers using denial of service attacks to bring down the servers. A community-led investigation determined that the owners of the website were directly involved in hacking the Apex servers and were also behind some of the denial attacks on the Titanfall servers as a type of false flag, to get Respawn to bring back the cancelled Titanfall Online game.

The 'Monsters Within' event released on October 12, 2021, as the 2021 Halloween Event. People were upset when it was announced because the event was not launching with the Shadow Royale gamemode, and it was instead only going to be available for the final week of the event. There was also controversy over the way that Respawn sold the event skins, as players could not buy them by themselves. People were also upset because the game was in a state of constant crashes and many game breaking bugs.

Spinoff media

In February 2023, it was announced that Apex Legends: The Board Game would begin a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter on May 17. The crowdfunding campaign launched as planned, reaching its goal in just seven hours. The game is being developed by Glass Cannon Unplugged, and features team-based skirmish battles for up to four players.