Apex Legends Shatters Concurrent Player Record on Steam

On May 10, Respawn’s free-to-play battle royale Apex Legends introduced its long-awaited Season 13. Titled “Saviors,” the update is adding plenty of new content including changes to Storm Point–namely, an entirely new location within a sea monster carcass. Apparently, game fans love giant dead animals: on May 12, StreamCharts data shows that more players logged into the game on Steam than ever before. 412,556 players, to be exact.

The previous concurrent player record for Apex Legends players on Steam was 393,116, from February 2022.

On an earnings call this week, EA reported that Apex Legends had made over $2 billion in total earnings since its release in 2019.

Prior to the release of Season 13, Jeff Shaw, a lead level designer, discussed the new additions to the game in an interview–specifically the changes to Storm Point.

“One of the bigger goals for the map update was bolstering the number of POIs from 17 to 18. This was part of our ongoing effort to make Storm Point more competitive as a map and we really wanted to do this additively without removing anything that was important,” Shaw said. The update has also seen four IMC Armories added to Storm Point, each presenting a new way for squads to quickly grab good loot.

Apex Legends has also introduced the new character Newcastle in the Season 13 update.

This week, Respawn Entertainment announced that Apex Legends Mobile would be launching globally on May 17. The game had previously launched in limited regions in March, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Columbia.

A large amount of upcoming content was leaked in March, including new maps, nine new characters, and plenty of new weapons.

Apex Legends is available to play on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. The game supports cross-play across all systems.

Upon its release in 2019, the game surpassed 25 million players in its first week. By April 2021, Apex Legends had approximately 100 million players. 

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