The battle royale game Apex Legends released more than two years ago, but it's still setting records. The free-to-play game from the developers of Titanfall surpassed 198,000 concurrent players on Steam recently, setting a new high watermark for the game.
SteamDB had Apex Legends at a peak concurrent player figure of 198,235 at the end of February. The game is showing strong growth, as Apex Legends' peak concurrent player number rose by around 70,000 compared to January, according to SteamDB (via PC Gamer).
These are massive numbers, but they don't even capture the full extent of Apex's reach. The battle royale game is also available on Origin, where it presumably has a sizeable playerbase.
The success seems to suggest that Apex's Season 8 helped bring more players into the fold to check out the new hero, Fuse, and duke it out on the new version of the King's Canyon map.
Apex Legends originally launched in February 2019 but it didn't come to Steam until November 2020. The game is a chart-topper on Steam, consistently ranking in the top 10 most-played games on the platform.
The ongoing success of Apex Legends is helping publisher Electronic Arts in a big way. The company said in its latest earnings briefing that Apex Legends experienced a 30% growth in new players year-over-year, while its various microtransactions helped EA make billions from in-game purchases.
Apex Legends will expand further when it releases on Nintendo Switch on March 9 with a port studio Panic Button.
Many are wondering if developer Respawn will ever return to Titanfall in the wake of Apex's success. According to EA Studios boss Laura Miele, the fate of the Titanfall series is in Respawn's hands, and the studio will decide how to move forward.