Apex Legends Strategy Is Failing: Can The Game Survive?

When it was released in February, Apex Legends impressed pretty much everyone with its explosive popularity. Now, it seems, that popularity may have fallen off significantly. Though Respawn and EA don't talk specifics when it comes to player count and total playing spending, new insights from SuperData are suggesting that Apex Legends is on a very steep downward trend.

If that turns out to be true, it wouldn't be all that surprising. Respawn specifically avoids implementing a weekly update schedule – something Fortnite uses to great success – in an effort to stop developer burnout before it starts. While that's a definitely a laudable goal, especially with a current industry environment where developers frequently draw attention to ridiculously difficult crunch periods, it does mean that there isn't a steady stream of new content to keep players at a high level of engagement.

In any case, SuperData reports that Apex Legends fell out of the top 10 highest grossing games in April. The Neilsen-owned analytic firm estimates that Apex Legends generated $24 million during the month of April, which puts monthly revenue at a quarter of what it was in its first month.

So, player spending has dropped off significantly in a short period of time. Pulling in $24 million over the course of a single month isn't anything to stick your nose up at, but if this downward trend continues, it might be bad news for Apex Legends.

One thing that could help boost player spending is the introduction of a new Battle Pass, which should be happening at some point in the next few weeks. We don't know when, exactly, Respawn will be kicking off season 2, but we do know that EA will be talking about season 2 at E3 2019 next month. Stay tuned, because we'll likely have a release date for season 2 in a matter of weeks.