Apex Legends has only continued to grow in 2021 with total players skyrocketing well above 100 million leading into Season 12. With EA confirming nearly 30 million new players signing up in the last year, the publisher is confident that number will only rise.
Apex Legends has managed to defy the “dead game” meme, and in 2021 it turned the narrative around. With streamers flocking to the battle royale title from Warzone, the Apex Games experienced booming player growth.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated on a February 1 earnings call that Apex Legends’ monthly active player base has increased by 30% across the last 12 months.
This was estimated at around 28 million new players joining in the last year, with overall engagement “now well over 100 million players” according to Wilson.
However, EA only expects that to grow as the team works on more ways of reaching new players through both ALGS and the highly-anticipated mobile launch, which is entering beta soon.
“We are expanding to reach more players and viewers with new original content on the way. Our growing Apex Legends esports ecosystem and Apex Legends Mobile will soon be moving into soft launch as we continue our worldwide rollout,” Wilson said.
“We’ve had strong engagement and community feedback during Closed Beta testing, and we’re excited for more players to experience Apex Legends Mobile soon.”
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The increase in active players has also lined EA’s pockets with revenue nearing $1 billion a year on the battle royale.
As for future growth in 2022 and beyond, the publisher is confident in Respawn’s approach for seasonal releases to grab the attention of new players for the years to come.
“I think that what the Apex team in particular have been able to demonstrate is they work very closely with their community, they’re deeply engaged with their community,” Wilson stated.
“What we’ve seen since the very beginning of the launch of this game is them being able to work in a very calculated way around the delivery of really interesting new content, new maps, and new modalities of play on a season-by-season basis, that has continued to grow the overall player base, [and] continued to grow the overall experience.”
Respawn will be looking to continue that upwards trajectory with Apex Legends Season 12, which is set to launch on February 8, 2022 with new legend Mad Maggie, the Control game mode, and major changes to Olympus.