Apex Legends‘ player base might just be about to get a whole lot bigger as a deal to make the game available in China looks to be on the brink of completion.
Since it’s surprising release on February 4, Respawn Entertainment’s title has gone from strength to strength, topping the charts on Twitch and giving long-time battle royale king Fortnite some stiff competition.
Alongside that, the free-to-play game has already broken an incredible milestone by having over 25 million players within its first two weeks of release – and now it’s player base could be about to boom again.
According to a report from the South China Morning Post, a source on the Chinese blogging website, Sina Weibo, claims that Tencent is in talks with EA to take the wildly popular video game to the Chinese market.
Western media companies must have a local partner in China to start distribution and Tencent is usually one of the key players in making it possible – for a fee, of course.
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Words are Tencent is in talks with EA about publishing Apex in China https://t.co/uyeDZp446M
— Josh Ye 葉嘉栩 (@TheRealJoshYe) February 15, 2019
The Chinese tech and media giant has already struck deals to take other battle royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to China – and they have become huge hits with the market.
Since those deals were agreed, Chinese regulators had placed a nine-month-long freeze on accepting licenses for new games. However, that freeze has since ended and now EA has the chance to strike while the iron is hot and enter another massive market.