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Respawn Entertainment’s new free-to-play battle royale game Apex Legends got off to a hell of a hot start, hitting 50 million players in its first month on the market, but it seems the game’s momentum may already be faltering in a big way. Early on, the game hit a peak of over 350,000 simultaneous Twitch viewers, but that number has dropped to around 30,000 viewers for this past week. Google searches for the game have also seen a sharp decline.
Per another report Apex Legends Twitch viewership has dropped 75 percent from 40 million viewers per week near launch, to around 10 million viewers per week today.
According to the financial analysts at Seeking Alpha, Apex Legends’ initial success and buzz was largely “acquired,” not organic – in other words, EA paid major streamers to boost the game’s profile, and now that the money has stopped flowing, they’ve moved onto other things. Mainly Fortnite, which has maintained an even keel during Apex's dramatic rise and fall. As a result, seeking Alpha has labelled Apex Legends as “wildly overvalued.” EA’s stock saw a major spike when the game was released back in February, but may be about to come back down to earth.
The decline in interest in Apex Legends isn’t a huge surprise, as Respawn just hasn’t been able to provide the steady flow of interesting new content these kind of games need. It’s a shame, because Apex Legends is undoubtedly a fun game, as Wcctech’s Kai Powell spelled out in his review…
“Even with other games looming on the horizon to cover, Apex Legends has been the one title I’ve gone back to again and again over the last week. No other battle royale game has so readily captured my interest and kept me wanting to play. Defeat doesn’t sting for very long because I can just hit the ground running in the next match and have fun shooting my way to the top. […] If Respawn can keep new content and characters flowing, Apex Legends easily stands a chance at being the best in the genre.”
Apex Legends is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
