Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends started hot, but has more or less fizzled out after launch. According to SuperData Research, the free to play battle royale title managed to generated $24 million in April 2019. Unfortunately, this figure is almost quarter of the amount made in February when it launched.
There a number of reasons for this drop. The $10 Battle Pass and the cosmetics offered were viewed as underwhelming by number of players. Furthermore, Respawn has been trying to iron out a number of glitches while also combating cheaters. The frequency of updates is perhaps the biggest culprit, however.
Respawn isn’t releasing updates at the same clip as Fortnite: Battle Royale, a fact the developer has acknowledged. The desire to avoid crunch and burnout for its development team was cited, which is well and good (especially given the reports about crunch on Fortnite). Sadly, money talks, and if an audience finds new content with a competitor that’s worth spending on, so be it.
Season 2 is coming up soon for Apex Legends and we’ll potentially get another Legend out of it. Stay tuned for more details on the same as E3 2019 rolls around.