Most of the battle royale genre fans have heard the tragedy of PUBG being dethroned by Fortnite in the course of a couple of months. Epic's game took Bluehole's child by surprise and introduced tons of quality-of-life features that were absent in PUBG back then. Funnily, the history repeated itself a few years later when all of a sudden, Apex Legends released to an overwhelmingly positive reception.

RELATED: 10 PlayStation Vs. Xbox Memes That Are Too Funny For Words

The game attracted 10 million players in just three days. Certainly, the free-to-play distribution model and a simultaneous release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC helped a lot. But the true miracle was the number of innovations made by Apex Legends in the sort of established Battle Royale genre.

10 Out Of Nowhere

The most important part of Apex Legends' release was its suddenness. The game took the industry by surprise, although it had actually leaked a year before that. Back in Spring 2018, a supposed Respawn's employee took it to Reddit where he "shared the leak" regarding the upcoming Battle Royale game within the Titanfall universe.

The "news" drew almost zero attention, which presumably resulted in the development team making a total overhaul of the game. Whatever they did before Apex Legends released, it was worth it. Everyone lost their minds and migrated to the latest game leaving overly popular Fortnite behind.

9 A Force To Be Considered

Another reason for Apex Legends' successful start was the quality of the game. It was a finished and polished project – although it obviously had some network issues, which are common for literally every online game upon the release. However, there was no early access period, no Alphas and Betas – Apex Legends entered the competition in an almost perfect state.

RELATED: 10 Assassin's Creed Odyssey Memes That Every Player Can Relate To

It just started existing and annoying the established leader of the BR market. It must've really hurt Epic Games' plans when Apex Legends stole all the attention in a matter of a few days.

8 Rapid Success

Speaking of exact numbers, Apex Legends' growth was phenomenal. It took the game just 8 hours to gather a player base of 1 million people. After three days, the player count hit the mark of 10 million, and after a month in the wild, there were 50 million players across the globe enjoying Respawn's Battle Royale title.

Needless to say, everyone was blown away by such a confident performance by Apex Legends, which led to creating memes like the one above. Never underestimate your competitor and be ready to strike back.

7 Death Is Upon Us

As you could've imagined, Apex Legends made a natural storm in the industry. It will never be revealed why exactly EA decided to hold the marketing campaign for the game back and secretly release the title. Perhaps, the executives didn't have the faith in yet another BR shooter – or maybe they needed some space for their "premium" Anthem title.

RELATED: 10 Skyrim Vs. Fallout Memes That Are Too Hilarious For Words

Whatever the case is, Apex Legends stole the hearts of BR fans and almost killed the online figures in PUBG, Blackout, and, obviously, Fortnite. The first weeks after the game released were totally dominated by Apex on all the frontlines including streaming services.

6 The Real Enemy

Blackout was a great addition to the battle royale shooter family. It was a refined experience of high quality, but it didn't actually introduce anything revolutionary new. That's why most of the genre fans examined it with moderate curiosity and, sooner or later, returned back to their favorite Fortnite. In other words, Blackout wasn't a threat by any means.

Apex Legends, on the other hand, brought in various innovations as was mentioned above. It wasn't just another Battle Royale game. Instead, Respawn's passionate project added mechanics that you would've never thought you needed in a BR game – but now can't imagine your life without.

5 The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend

Fortnite was not the only battle royale game to suffer from the unexpected appearance of Apex Legends. PUBG was also losing its audience in favor of the newly released game, and many fans felt like Bluehole's project shared a common enemy with Epic's building shooter. It's only partially true since every battle royale game is still on its own in the never-ending war for players' attention.

RELATED: 10 Pokémon Sword & Shield Memes That Are Too Hilarious For Words

However, it was somewhat comforting for the player bases of Fortnite and PUBG to dream about confronting Apex Legends back to back. It was never really like that, of course, but the idea is inspiring nonetheless.

4 If you can't do better – steal

The gameplay in Apex Legends proved to be comfortable and enjoyable. The developers decided to avoid unnecessary complications and corrected existing flaws in the BR genre. One of the best ideas implemented in the game was the respawn mechanics, which allowed you to bring back your fallen teammates so they wouldn't leave the match right away and could continue the fight.

This sole concept had changed a lot back then. While the other games on the market did not offer the same type of salvation for eliminated players, it was a matter of time until someone would "adopt" it. Fortnite was the pioneer – but it completely ripped off the respawn mechanics from Apex.

3 The Bitter Truth

"The Scroll of Truth" meme template is a great way to express thoughts that do not necessarily display the actual truth. Still, the picture you can see reflects the idea that you can't infinitely milk your audience with repetitive and lazy gameplay updates – and the emerging of a proper competitor proves that being free and accessible is not the only key to success.

RELATED: The Witcher 3: 10 Hilarious Yennefer Memes That Will Make You Cry Laughing

Fortnite is not a bad game by any means – it is sophisticated and well supported, but the real truth is that Apex Legends helped it become better. In other words, the release of Respawn's project was a win-win situation for all the Battle Royale enthusiasts regardless of their favorite game.

2 Facing The Undeniable

The developers of Fortnite were literally forced to utilize some of the key features introduced in Apex Legends to make their own game more attractive. Just like the aforementioned respawn mechanics, a few other things "migrated" to Fortnite including the ping system. But why would Epic Games do that?

The reason is pretty simple. The elegant and effective solutions performed by Respawn in Apex Legends made the game more fluid and controllable – and ultimately better. And just like PUBG stole emotes from Fortnite, Fortnite had to steal something from Apex Legends to catch up.

1 The actual standoff

Content-creators from the YouTube-channel called Laugh Over Life examined the rivalry between Apex Legends and Fortnite in a hilarious video, which you can watch here. In short, the vicious hunter Bloodhound from Apex somehow made it to the world of Fortnite, and the outcome turned out to be pretty deadly for the latter game.

Obviously, one can only dream of a proper crossover between two games, which will probably never happen. However, even fantasizing about it can shed light on the existing issues of Fortnite and Apex Legends. In that regard, memes can be actually helpful.

NEXT: Skyrim: 10 Hilarious Memes Only True Dragonborn Understand