On April 2nd, 4 years ago, Apex Legends saw the light of day. What some at the time thought was EA’s desperate attempt to catch up with the hot battle royale trend is actually one of the most successful in a very competitive genre today.
This is particularly evident now, because Apex Legends is currently more popular than ever on Steam. On February 15th, 2023, the concurrent player population reached a new milestone as SteamDB recorded a whopping 600,000 concurrent active users. Apex Legends breaks its previous record of August 4, 2022, when 511,000 people hoped to survive and thus win at the same time.
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It is very likely that Apex Legends will be played more than ever before. We don’t have any figures from Electronic Arts and the Battle Royale is also played on the consoles. But with a Free2Play game in particular, it can be assumed that the number of players will not only skyrocket on Steam.
It is also unclear whether similar numbers were reached when Apex Legends was released four years ago. Back then, the game wasn’t even released on Steam. You can read in our article which games are played the most on Steam overall:
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Records on Steam: The 10 games with the highest number of players
Why is Apex Legends so popular right now?
In fact, Apex Legends player numbers on Steam have steadily increased. Only around 100,000 people played for the Steam release, but the shooter now has a daily player count of up to 400,000.
The fact that Apex is breaking the 600,000 mark right now is most likely due to the new season and a new update. On the occasion of the fourth birthday, the season started on February 14th festivity
and, in addition to new cosmetic content, also brought a major update that changes quite a bit in the game.
Here’s an overview of what’s changing with the new season.
These are the most important changes:
- New classes: Instead of introducing a new legend, there is now a kind of class system in Apex Legends. The existing legends are divided into five classes, which represent their playing style. There’s attack, skirmish, scout, regulation, and support.
- Team Deathmatch: Deathmatch is introduced as a new mode so that you can get into the game quickly and without too much risk. Here, two teams of 6 meet and whoever gets 30 kills first wins the game.
- Mixtape: Apex introduces a rotating playlist of different modes, so the choice of modes and map changes every 15 minutes. Initially, you’ll only be able to play Team Deathmatch here, but gun barrel and control will be added to the rotation later on.
- Nemesis: Apex gets a new assault rifle called Nemesis. An energy weapon that fires four shots with each salvo.
- Orientation games: The orientation games are there so that new players can test the systems of the battle royale in a relaxed manner and are not thrown directly into the deep end.
In addition to these major changes, there are also many detail adjustments. The entire patch notes you can read here.
What do you think of the new season? Did you come back like many others or did you never stop playing completely? Write and in the comments what you like at the moment and also what you would like for the future!
