Apex Legends

About

Apex Legends is a free-to-play Battle Royale game created by the development team behind the Titanfall series and published by Electronic Arts.

History

On February 4th, Respawn Studios announced and released Apex Legends, a free-to-play Battle Royale game for the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.^[1] The game is squad-based Battle Royale, meaning teams compete to be the last team standing in the traditional large area. The game takes place in the Titanfall universe but it is not considered a sequel to Titanfall 2.^[2] There are eight classes to choose from, though there are no mechs.^[3] That day, gameplay videos appeared on YouTube. For example, user JackFrags posted a "first impressions" video that gained over 700,000 views (shown below).

Reception

Early reception to the game was positive, and the game was very popular on the day of its launch. Respawn CEO Vince Sampella confirmed that the game had cracked 1 million unique players within 8 hours of launch.^[4] EA later reported the game had cracked 2.5 million players within the first 24 hours of launch.^[2] Kotaku^[5] praised the twists the game placed on the Battle Royale genre, praising the classes of fighters more akin to that of Overwatch than Fortnite as well as the communicative features that accompany the team-based play. The Verge^[6] praised the way the game handles team-based play as well, removing the need to communicate via voice and instead allow players to work as a team without verbal cues.

Online Presence

The game made a quick splash on YouTube, where gameplay and impressions videos gained hundreds of thousands of views. For example, a Venture Beat preview of the game gained over 174,000 views (shown below, left) and a video by NoahJ456 gained over 330,000 views (shown below, right). The game also saw 500,000 viewers on Twitch at one point on the day of release.^[2] A subreddit for the game quickly gained over 74,000 subscribers.^[7]

Search Interest

External References