Apex Legends player count dropped by almost 50% on Steam this year

Steam Charts data shows that Apex Legends’ player count in 2023 has dropped by 44 percent on Steam.

Despite developer Respawn rolling out several updates, Apex Legends has experienced a noteworthy drop in players over the last 12 months.

Even before the brief server outage in July 2023, Steam Charts showed the game hitting a new low on PC for the first time since December 2021. Ranked changes, unbalanced matchmaking, and other widespread complaints were viewed as the culprits behind the dropoff.

However, in the months since then, Respawn has issued Ranked-related improvements and the like. And still, the player count continues on its roller coaster ride of peaks and valleys.

Apex Legends’ player count experienced a huge dropoff in 2023

February 2023 saw the popular battle royale grow its Steam player base by an impressive 30 percent, bringing the average player count to over 257,000. According to Steam Charts, Apex Legends hasn’t returned to such a high throughout the last several months.

As noted by Apex Legends News on Twitter/X, the game’s average number of players for December tops off at around 143,000 – a 44 percent drop.

In response to the post, content creator BirnoOCE attributed the decline in Apex Legends’ player count to two different factors: the content drought and competition from other games.

Valve’s rollout of Counter-Strike 2 a few months ago seemingly cut into Apex’s user base. The same holds true for more recent releases such as The Finals, which launched on December 7 and already counts among Steam’s top-played games for the month.

Apex Legends shouldn’t be counted out just yet, though. It still sits in the top 10 on Steam, in spite of complaints leveled against its matchmaking, skin pricing, ranked play, and audio errors.

For now, Apex diehards can only hope that Respawn can manage to turn things around once Season 20 drops in 2024.