On Monday it was announced Apex Legends has already reached 50 million players worldwide. The news comes just one month since the game was released.
Apex Legends hit 50 Million players worldwide! We are humbled by all your support and can’t wait to show you what’s next. pic.twitter.com/QTDH57lfvB
— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) March 4, 2019
Respawn Entertainment's free-to-play battle royale game hit 1 million players within eight hours of Apex Legends' release. Within three days that count would rocket up to 10 million players, and by the end of the first week, Apex Legends would register 25 million players. While this shows that new players signing into the game has somewhat slowed, the figure is still considered record breaking.
The player count does not reveal how large the concurrent number of players on at any given time is, though report say that when the game reached 25 million players, the concurrent number was around 2 million.
While this is still far from the 200 million players Fortnite has, it took Fornite around a year to reach that number. At the current pace, Apex Legends has the chance to break that number in record time. According to analyst Daniel Ahmad, it took Fortnite 16 weeks to reach 45 million.
Number of Apex Legends players after:
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) March 4, 2019
8 hours - 1m
1 day - 2.5m
3 days - 10m
1 week - 25m
4 weeks - 50m
Number of Fortnite BR players after:
2 weeks - 10m
6 weeks - 20m
11 weeks - 30m
16 weeks - 45m
The number is surprising, considering that no major changes have been implemented in apex Legends yet. So far the "biggest" change has been the release of the Havoc Rifle.
Even without major updates, Apex Legends has been doing its best to entice players to join the game. Around the middle of February, Apex Legends partnered with the streaming platform Twitch to allow players who had Twitch Prime account to link their profiles. Players with this premium account were also given additional rewards including a Pathfinder legendary skin.
Apex Legends also has the advantage of having a great ping system. This is a system that allows players to communicate with each other in-game without talking. Fun is a main factor when it comes to playing games, but being able to communicate with one's team is considered by many players as an important feature. Unsurprisingly, Fortnite has already revealed plans to implement a similar ping system in its game.
Apex Legends had a large impact on publisher Electronic Arts, as the company had previously reported that it was unable to meet expectations. This resulted in EA stock value dropping by 13 percent. The success of Apex Legends has turned things around, resulting in impressive EA stock growth.
