Why Apex Legends Lost 70% of Its Players?

It seems Apex Legends has been struggling in terms of popularity over the past year and many wonder why the game has seemingly lost its appeal.

Apex Legends Has Lost a Huge Number of Players

When it comes to modern battle royals, many people would think of Apex Legends. Ever since it debuted in 2019, the game quickly gained a huge following. Throughout 2021-2023, the shooter’s popularity increased immensely. However, 2024 seems like a pivotal year for Apex Legends as the game lost about 70% of its player base.

According to Steam Charts, Apex Legends’ peak player count in the last month has been 153,693, certainly a respectable number. However, when you compare this to the peak of 469,431 concurrent players in the game in February of last year, you can clearly see a significant drop. While Steam Charts logs only those who obviously play on Steam, the console players likely follow a similar trend.

Apex Legends saw the largest number of fans log in in February 2023 at a whopping 624,473. However, ever since then, that number has been slowly dwindling, with the past six to eight months seeing a significant downshift. While the current player average is certainly no figure to scoff at, the fact the game lost almost 70% of its player base still raises some questions.

Why Has This Happened?

While there are likely many factors that play in this phenomenon, a few stand out. One of these is the game’s monetization or rather the increasing of it. In typical EA fashion, the amount of monetization in Apex Legends has increased significantly over the past few months. Since October, prices for several things, such as the cost of the battle pass, have risen dramatically.

In addition, there were about a dozen microtransaction-heavy collection events over the course of the year. One particularly egregious example of what many consider a cash grab is a recent rumor that the devs are adding a “relic grenade”.

The second reason why Apex Legends has lost so many of its players is likely the amount of content the game had in 2024. Or rather, the seeming lack of content.  There was only a single new legend released the entire year and one new BR map. There were no new weapons introduced and seasons blurred together as the year had as much content as some games do in their own individual seasons.

One of the final contributors to Apex Legends’ diminishing player numbers is the rising competition. Marvel Rivals has busted onto the scene in quite a fashion and has quickly gained a huge following, with many Apex players moving to the new shooter. And with news that Marvel Rivals is going to have 14 more heroes over the next few months, there seems to be quite a lot of content in store for fans.

Of course, we should not forget that Apex Legends having an average of 71,000 players is still a pretty respectable number. Few games could ride themselves with stats like that. But considering the shooter lost 70% of its players in about a year is still concerning for hardcore fans of the game. Of course, the title has a long way to go before it reaches the almost-dead game status of Halo Infinite, which seems to be barely holding up with four-digit player numbers.