Apex Legends, the surprise free-to-play online battle royale game by Respawn Entertainment, has quickly hit another major milestone.
According to a blog post by Respawn president Vince Zampella, Apex Legends has attracted over 10 million players over the course of three days, shattering a record previously held by fellow battle royale game Fortnite, which took two weeks to hit 10 million players. What's more, the game now boasts at least 1 million concurrent players.
"This has been a truly incredible journey. We tested and tweaked. We argued and agreed. We got to a point where we felt some magic. We knew it would be risky to take the franchise in this direction, to go free to play, and do a surprise launch. But we fell in love with Apex Legends and wanted, needed, other people to play it too." -- Vince Zampella
Since the game was originally released three days ago, the game has been dominating the battle royale market, thanks in part to the surprise release which was done intentionally by EA. Per Lead Producer Drew McCoy, in an interview with Eurogamer, "We're doing a free to play game, with essentially loot boxes, after we were bought by EA, and it's not Titanfall 3. It's the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that - let's just ship the game and let players play."
The marketing campaign by EA has also been minimal but effective, turning the game over to popular online streamers and video creators through fully disclosed paid sponsorships. Those sponsorships have also helped Apex Legends to reach one of the top spots on twitch streaming, now consistently beating out Fortnite and other popular streaming games for the time being.
Respawn Entertainment has stated that a future Titanfall game is still in the works for 2019, but for now, Apex Legends has been a smash hit, with the game even being credited for helping EA after their lackluster Q3 report saw their stock price dip before rebounding strongly after Apex Legends release.
Apex Legends is out now and is free to play on the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. You can also check out our quick tips on surviving in Apex Legends here.
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