Since its launch two years ago, Apex Legends has become a flagship property for Respawn Entertainment and EA. The game continues to provide players with new content, events, and has recently released the newest Legend, Fuse. The game has risen in popularity enough that it has reached new records for concurrent players on Steam.
Apex Legends is a character-driven battle royale based in the Titanfall universe where players can choose between unique characters with their own special abilities. Previously, Apex Legends was exclusive to EA's Origin platform on PCs, but was finally released on Steam in November of 2020. In January, Apex Legends had hit a new concurrent player record on Steam, reaching about 130,000 players at one time.
All through February, the Steam player count for Apex Legends has continued to rise. Saturday, February 27, Apex Legends reached a new all-time high on the platform with a little under 197,000 players. The exact number reached according to SteamCharts was 196,799, showing that the game is getting ever closer to the milestone of 200,000. Apex Legends continues to have millions of players across all its platforms, but its impressive that Steam continues to bring in more players.
This increase of player was likely driven by the launch of Season 8, which introduced a new Legend and kicked off a new battle pass. The start of Season 8 also saw Apex Legend's anniversary event, which celebrated two years since the game's launch. The anniversary event saw new Legendary and Epic skins, weapon cosmetics, and the chance to earn 150 Heirloom shards. Between players grinding for battle pass levels, and trying to earn the valuable Heirloom shards, it's no wonder the player count rose so high.
While Season 8 didn't launch a new map for players to fight in, it saw the return of the fan-favorite Kings Canyon. Respawn is still likely to develop more maps, and it definitely has the resources, especially since Apex Legends will likely become a billion dollar franchise for EA. Respawn has also announced its plans to expand the Apex Legends world past the realm of a battle royale later this year. In all likelihood, there will continue to be opportunities for players to have exciting new experiences with the Apex Legends world.
Since Steam continues to break user records as well, all in all it seems likely that releasing Apex Legends on the marketplace was a smart move. So long to those proclaiming that Apex Legends is a "dead game." As long as the team behind the popular battle royale continues to entice current and new players into playing the game, Apex Legends will certainly be around for quite some time.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and will come to Switch on March 9.