Apex Legends Is Off To A Huge Start, Hits 25 Million Players In A Week

Apex Legends, the free-to-play battle royale game from Titanfall developer Respawn, continues to soar. More than 25 million players have now tried Apex Legends, Respawn's Vince Zampella announced in a blog post. Additionally, the game reached "well over" 2 million peak concurrent players over the weekend, he said. A new Apex Legends update is out now.

Apex Legends has been rising since release on Monday, February 4. The game hit 1 million players in eight hours, increasing to 2.5 million players in one day. The previous peak concurrent figure was 600,000, so it's increasing fast. Apex Legends is nowhere close to Fortnite, however, as the game--which is much older--has 200 million players and a peak concurrent user record of 8.3 million.

"What a week! Since we launched Apex Legends last week on Monday we've seen the creation of an Apex Legends community that is excited, thriving, and full of great feedback and ideas," Zampella said. "Our goal is to build this game with you, our community, so keep giving us your feedback because we really are listening."

Zampella also announced some new events for Apex Legends. The Apex Legends Challenge, which is sponsored by Twitch, is a streamer event where 48 of the "biggest streamers" on Twitch will compete against each other. The event takes place on February 12 and February 19. You can watch it here on Twitch. Apex Legends is wildly popular on Twitch. Today, it has at this writing 409,000 viewers, which is well ahead of Fortnite, which has 168,000 viewers, according to Twitch's public viewing data.

Additionally, Apex Legends will host a Valentine's Day event where players can get Valentine's Day-themed loot, though no other details are available yet. And finally, the Apex Legends battle pass premieres in March. It kicks off the game's Season One, and this will include new characters, weapons, and loot, among other things.

In addition to Apex Legends, Respawn is working on something new in the Titanfall universe to release later this year, though whether or not it is the much-requested Titanfall 3 remains to be seen. Additionally, Respawn is developing a Star Wars game called Jedi: Fallen Order, and it is also slated to launch in 2019.

GameSpot's Apex Legends review scored the game a 9/10.

"Apex Legends is a mix of smart shooter ideas that makes for a competitive, team-based game that gets at all the best parts of battle royale while addressing a lot of the weaknesses," reviewer Phil Hornshaw said. "Respawn's intense focus on team play makes Apex more than just a worthy addition to the genre; it's an indicator of where battle royale should go in the future."