Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends managed to carve a niche for itself in a market crowded with other free-to-play battle royale-hero shooters thanks to its colorful characters and exciting gunplay. Apex Legends had an extremely strong start, hitting records for revenue and earning more than any other free-to-play game had in the first month of launch at the time of its release. Despite some controversies in the proceeding years including unfair monetization accusations, Apex Legends has continued to grow and attract players. Now, four years after its initial launch, Apex Legends has revealed some of its plans for the future, but fans have been divided over the announcement and what it might mean.
Respawn recently revealed that it would be opening a new studio to help support the development of future Apex Legends content, which affirmed the developer's commitment to the title. Apex Legends director Steven Ferreira also claimed that the intention was for the game to be around for "more than 10 or 15 years," again showing Respawn's intention to double down on the game. This should have been good news for fans – and there are obviously positives to take from it – however, looking at Apex Legends now, there are worries that future content will focus more on patches and bug fixes like Season 16 over substantial new content like previous seasons.
Apex Legends' Long-term Plans
The announcement that Respawn is taking a long view of Apex Legends' fortunes does mean that fans will hopefully have lots of future content to look forward to. Whether this is new game modes to try out, characters to choose from, or special rewards or weaponry to enjoy is yet to be seen, but with the developer's intentions to keep supporting Apex Legends for years to come, players are hopeful this is going to lead to some good things. However, the news wasn't completely untinged with doubt.
At the moment, Apex Legends could be said to be in a little bit of a rough patch, given previous accusations from the playerbase that cheating is easily able to run rampant when it comes to matchmaking and the game's Ranked system. There are also a handful of technical issues that boot gamers from matches and result in leaver penalties, among other bugs, which have started to rub even the game's most loyal fans the wrong way. While the formation of a new studio to help support continued development on Apex Legends seems like a surefire way to sort out these mechanical mishaps, Electronic Arts has continued to make layoffs within the development team as well, potentially indicating some internal issues.
Why This Could Lead To More Season 16's
Developer issues aside, it's unlikely that all future seasons are going to be as satisfyingly jam-packed with new content as some of the previous ones have been. The release of seasons is a way for battle royale titles like Apex Legends to keep plying players with new features and add-ons, and to keep them coming back instead of jumping ship to competing hero shooters. They can be great ways to change things up, offering buffs and nerfs to characters or weaponry, or adding things like maps and modes to freshen up the format. However, although Season 16 has brought some changes, it didn't bring any new characters.
Instead, Season 16 has focused on fixes and balance patches over new content, and while these might be necessary to course-correct the base game, it's hardly as exciting an update as players might have been hoping for. With the longevity aims of Respawn, future seasons will likely follow this pattern more often than not, choosing to fine-tune the increasingly expanding game and update what's already there rather than provide frequent substantive additions. Nerf and buffs to features, along with other more technical updates, will certainly help keep Apex Legends ticking along, but they might fail to attract new fans or retain old ones if future seasons don't also bring more obvious changes like new heroes.
Apex Legends is available now for Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.