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The History of Apex Legends
2K View2022-05-19
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
With this week’s launch of Apex Legends Mobile blowing up our phones, Apex is all we’ve been able to talk about. But if you haven’t paid a lot of attention to console games or big publishers like Electronic Arts, you may be wondering: Where the heck did this game even come from?
The story of Apex Legends is the tale of a powerful struggle played out on a hellish battlefield of the future, one where soulless corporate overlords and media hype men have made a sport out of people’s lives. And the game’s narrative is pretty bleak too!
To truly begin at the beginning, we have to go back over a decade to the heady days of 2009, when mobile games were barely worth playing, much less close to a console/PC experience, and when the multiplayer shooter world was ruled over by a single franchise: Call of Duty.
Image Credited to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | Infinity Ward | Activision
The Changing Face of Warfare
At the end of 2009, business partners Jason West and Vince Zampella were on top of the world. Infinity Ward, the studio they founded just after the turn of the century, was arguably now one of the most successful developers in the world. The team’s fourth game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, had launched on November 10, 2009, and it had sold almost five million copies in one day.
Nowhere to go but up, right?
Record scratch. Not so fast.
As West—Infinity Ward’s president—and Zampella—Infinity Ward’s CEO—moved into 2010, they entered negotiations for a new contract with publisher Activision from a heightened position of power. After all, they were the two men in charge of the development team that had just been responsible for, as Activision had touted, “the biggest entertainment launch in history.” That dubious brag was due to the game’s astounding first-day sales of $310 million, an incredible feat with or without the record-breaking association.
Image Credited to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | Infinity Ward | Activision
Despite the impressive sales figures, Activision didn’t feel like the future success of the Call of Duty franchise depended on West and Zampella sticking around. The duo were demanding more money and a greater degree of creative freedom in the future, and the publisher wasn’t particularly interested in offering either of those incentives.
By March 2010, contract negotiations had broken down entirely. Activision accused West and Zampella of already being in talks with other publishers, which would put them in breach of their current contract. After posturing and legal threats failed to make much headway, Activision used the supposedly broken contract as an excuse to fire West and Zampella from the studio and the mega-popular shooter franchise that they had created.
Image Credited to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 | Infinity Ward | Activision
Not ones to rest, the Infinity Ward founders got busy and a mere month after being fired by Activision, they announced the formation of their new studio: Respawn Entertainment. The studio was just beginning, but West and Zampella had already inked a contract with Activision rival Electronic Arts, who would distribute its first game. Over the next few years, Respawn would be staffed up by both new blood and dozens of previous colleagues from Infinity Ward who were ready for a fresh challenge.
(It doesn’t really relate to the rest of the story we’re telling here, but just to satisfy any curiosity: Shortly after being fired, Jason West and Vince Zampella sued Activision for wrongful termination, while Activision countersued the duo, claiming that they had conspired with a competing publisher to steal away the studio’s top talent while still employed by Activision. In May 2012, those two lawsuits were settled out of court, with both parties agreeing to “strictly confidential” terms. Though nothing is public, it seems likely those terms included a nice payout for West and Zampella. West retired from Respawn shortly after the lawsuit was settled.)
Image Credited to Titanfall | Respawn Entertainment | EA
The First Drop
Fans eager to see what Respawn Entertainment would create wouldn’t have to wait too long. In June 2013, at Electronic Arts’s E3 press conference, the studio unleashed its first trailer for its upcoming debut game: Titanfall. In keeping with the strengths of a studio with a legacy of hit shooters, their new franchise would be a multiplayer-focused shooter as well. But where the gunplay might seem familiar to Call of Duty players, the setting would be more science-fiction, and players would experience a greater level of mobility on the battlefield.
And then there were the (literal) big guns, the one final twist that would really set Titanfall apart from any shooters that had come before it: the Titans. These were massive, bipedal mech suits that could be summoned into multiplayer matches for players to climb inside and take control. Titans were a major selling point for Titanfall: an explosion of spectacle that provided a climax to intense matches and gave players a major power fantasy to aim towards.
In March 2014, almost exactly four years after West and Zampella were unceremoniously booted from Infinity Ward, Respawn Entertainment released Titanfall. The game had a positive but not overwhelmingly warm reception amongst critics, but it proved to be a hit with players. By May 2014, EA had confirmed that it would continue partnering with Respawn Entertainment for “new Titanfall experiences” to come, and by October 2015 the publisher was touting that Titanfall had sold a whopping ten million copies.
Image Credited to Titanfall | Respawn Entertainment | EA
One of the most talked-about elements of the first Titanfall was its non-traditional approach to telling a story. Although multiplayer had always been the biggest factor in the success of Call of Duty games, those titles had still always featured a single-player campaign, usually in the range of seven to ten hours, to give less competitive players a reason to check out the game, or hardcore players something to pick away at when they needed a break from intense PvP firefights.
Titanfall, though, did not have a single-player mode. It did have an element that Respawn referred to as a “campaign,” but this scattered story would be told through short cutscenes and character dialogue that played before, during, and after multiplayer matches. While it was a unique idea, it didn’t well for getting players invested in this new franchise’s characters and concepts. Players and critics alike complained that they felt disconnected from the narrative, and that it felt strange and disjointed when things would progress even when they lost a match.
The struggle to tell a story didn’t end up holding Titanfall back too much, but it was still an issue Respawn looked to address with the game’s inevitable sequel. But that project found itself facing a different set of challenges altogether.
Image Credited to Titanfall 2 | Respawn Entertainment | EA
Critical Success, Sales Missteps
In March 2015, riding high off the buzz of a year of great sales for Titanfall, Vince Zampella attended the BAFTA Game Awards, where Titanfall was a nominee in three different categories. Though it didn’t end up winning an award, Zampella was still in a good enough mood to casually confirm in an interview that Titanfall 2 was in development.
An official reveal of the sequel followed soon after, and Titanfall 2 began a year-and-a-half long hype cycle of showing off what was new and trying to get fans excited. Among the biggest improvements promised were multiplayer modes with much greater variety and a real, full-fledged single-player campaign, with a story that the studio said would be both epic and emotionally involving.
Image Credited to Titanfall 2 | Respawn Entertainment | EA
When Titanfall 2 released in October 2016, those who played it discovered that those promises were by and large kept. The game received heaps of critical praise for its fun, inventive single-player mode, which had players stepping into the shoes of a Frontier Militia rifleman named Jack Cooper. In a classic heroic adventure, Cooper realizes his ambitious dreams of becoming a Titan pilot with the assistance of an artificial intelligence known as BT. While Cooper on his own was a fairly generic shooter protagonist, the back-and-forth quips with BT added a sort of “buddy cop” dynamic that made both characters much more likable in the long run.
On top of all of that, the single-player campaign also featured some extremely clever, dynamic level design. While missions played out in a linear fashion similar to Call of Duty games, there was a greater element of puzzle-solving and making players think about movement and how to get from one area to the next. It made for an extremely satisfying experience. And that’s not even getting into the core multiplayer modes, which had been heavily rebalanced and improved from the first game to acclaim from fans.
Despite all of this effusive approval, however, Titanfall 2 had a big problem: its launch date. Unlike the first game with its launch during the generally slower spring season, Titanfall 2 hit store shelves on October 28, 2016, right in the heart of gaming’s busiest two months of releases. EA’s own Battlefield 1 arrived just a week earlier on October 21, 2016. That year’s iteration of Call of Duty, Infinite Warfare—developed, of course, by the still-kicking Infinity Ward—came out a week later on November 4, 2016.
Image Credited to Titanfall 2 | Respawn Entertainment | EA
Though the first game had sold well, Titanfall 2 was sandwiched between two absolute, well, titans of the shooter genre, franchises that had been around for over a decade and were guaranteed to sell millions upon millions of copies. The second entry in a cool but still relatively unproven series from a developer most gamers had not heard of—even if the people who founded it were well-established—just couldn’t compete.
In a January 2017 investor statement, EA confirmed that Titanfall 2 did not hit sales expectations, though they declined to speculate on whether the release date was a major part of the problem. The publisher never released exact sales numbers for Titanfall 2 the way they did for the first game, a sure enough sign that there wasn’t much for them to be bragging about. However, analysts at Morgan Stanley stated that they believed it had sold four million copies—not an abject failure by any means, but a crushing disappointment compared to the ten million the first game had sold and the fifteen million that EA’s Battlefield 1 sold.
In the months that followed, EA would continue to reiterate its devotion to both Titanfall as a franchise and Respawn Entertainment as a third-party partner, but the future seemed much more uncertain than it had at any time prior to the studio’s creation.
Image Credited to Titanfall 2 | Respawn Entertainment | EA
The Buyout
As history would show, EA wasn’t just blowing smoke with its friendly phrases. In November 2017 the publisher showed just how committed it was to this partnership by buying Respawn Entertainment outright for over $400 million.
“Our longtime partnership is grounded in a shared desire to push boundaries and deliver extraordinary and innovative new experiences for players around the world,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in a statement at the time. He called out the Titanfall franchise in specific, but at this point it was known that Respawn was working on a game set in the Star Wars universe, so many players felt unsure about if or when Titanfall would see a return.
In the same statement, Respawn CEO Vince Zampella said that EA “has been a great partner over the tears with Titanfall and Titanfall 2,” and boasted of this move as “a great next step for Respawn, EA, and our players.” Elsewhere in the acquisition announcement, it was in fact revealed that Respawn was working on “a new title in the Titanfall universe.”
Players didn’t have to worry, it turned out. But what Respawn did with Titanfall next would prove to be something totally unexpected and successful on an altogether different level.
Image Credited to Apex Legends | Respawn Entertainment | EA
Reaching the Apex
Following the 2016 release of Titanfall 2 and prior to the EA purchase, Respawn Entertainment found itself listless, unsure of the right direction for both the studio and its first and only original property. Rather than forge ahead on a Titanfall 3, the company split up into smaller groups of developers and had each one work on a series of prototypes and test games. They wanted to determine the future of Titanfall with an open mind for all sorts of new ideas. The prototypes that these small groups created included new multiplayer game modes that had never been tried before and proof-of-concepts for new single-player campaigns.
Before long, one test mode began to stand out as head and shoulders above the rest. Seemingly inspired by the surprise success of a tiny shooter called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, a team of two designers had created something they called “Survival.” In this multiplayer spin on Titanfall, twenty-four pilots and Titans would fight against each other until only one is left standing.
Within a month of internal testing, it became clear that “Survival” was something special. Many of the developers at Respawn became obsessed with it. The studio would hold raucous “Friday Night Fight” playtests, where winners were tracked on a chalk leaderboard called the “Chikn DNR Board” in a clear reference to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Respawn quickly grew the team working on “Survival” from two developers to twenty, eager to see what could happen with more resources behind it.
Image Credited to Apex Legends | Respawn Entertainment | EA
In October 2017, with Respawn’s purchase by EA looming, the “Survival” prototype received a new twist that would become a defining feature. Rather than playing as generic pilots, players were now made to choose from three “legends” who would eventually become recognizable characters to a huge player base: Gibraltar, Bloodhound, and Wraith.
The game took shape quickly from there. A month later, Titans were removed from the game, as they were clearly too overpowered and played too essential a role in determining the outcome of any given match. The max number of players was raised to fifty, and the parkour-style wallrunning of the Titanfall games was removed to help slow matches down. The single map the mode was played on began to take shape into what would eventually become the iconic form of Kings Canyon. And the studio even started playing with new mechanics, such as legend abilities and teammate respawning, to help set it apart further from other battle royale games that had started to pop up.
The developers at Respawn had realized two things at this point: The first was that “Survival” was its own game, not just a mode, and as such it deserved a name. The second was that even if they wanted to situate this title in the Titanfall universe, it was clearly going to be something separate from the mainline games, “something fundamentally different from Titanfall,” as they put it.
Respawn knew they had struck upon an idea that felt great, and they were hopeful gamers would be similarly enthusiastic. They decided to cancel another Titanfall-related project that was being worked on and put all resources behind the game they had just named: Apex Legends.
Image Credited to Apex Legends | Respawn Entertainment | EA
The Ambush
While one team at Respawn Entertainment was hard at work on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the studio heads and publisher Electronic Arts had quickly recognized the opportunity on their hands with Apex Legends. This would be Respawn’s first big launch as a studio fully owned and operated by EA. But Respawn wanted to handle this launch quite differently from the industry norm.
On the first day of February 2019, Respawn and EA invited a group of streamers, media members, and content creators to a secretive event in Los Angeles. There, behind closed doors, the team gave a short presentation introducing people outside of the studio to Apex Legends for the first time. Most game reveals like this might end with a trailer or an opportunity to interview developers, but Respawn had something else in mind: They wanted all those who had gathered at this event to play the game right away.
A two-hour playtest turned into four hours turned into eight. It was clear to all those in attendance, even the most skeptical, that Respawn had a game here that felt special and fully-formed already, even at this reveal event.
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
It’s important that it felt fully-formed too. Because, as the developer revealed to the shocked crowd, the studio intended to announce and launch Apex Legends at the same time. And that time was just a few days away.
On February 4, 2019, Respawn revealed the existence of Apex Legends to the world at large, and then it told impressed viewers the same thing that the streamers and media had heard: It’s available for download now. Go play it.
As Respawn prepared for this surprise game launch, one of the studio’s engineers gave a warning to the rest of the team to have realistic expectations: “Don’t expect a million players right out of the gate, or even within the first few months,” they cautioned. After all, the studio had already felt the bitter sting of disappointment with Titanfall 2’s performance. No one wanted to set themselves up to be let down again.
Then Apex Legends went live. It was a free-to-play, download-only battle royale for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms, so there were very few barriers to players getting their hands on it. Within seconds of the launch, tens of thousand of players were logging in for the first time. Within eight hours, a million players had downloaded and tested out the game. Three days later, that number had risen to ten million, the same astounding sales figures EA had bragged about for the first Titanfall.
By the end of February, Apex Legends had reached fifty million players.
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
The scope and scale of the game’s success and its impact on Respawn as a studio cannot be understated. The developers were also shocked and pleased to see that many of those same streamers and YouTube video creators who they had invited to the top-secret reveal a few days earlier remained obsessed with the game, devoting their content to it for weeks after launch. In its first week, Apex Legends had over eleven million hours watched on Twitch, with an average viewership of 183,089 and a peak viewership of 491,894. It had handily beaten out its top battle royale competition, Fortnite, claiming the number one spot for Twitch viewership that week.
Players flocked to the game in droves and sung its praises loudly. In particular, fans were fond of Apex Legends’s truly free-to-play nature. The game launched with eight playable characters, and six of those were unlocked from the outset. The other two didn’t require a terribly long grind to unlock, and virtually everything available for purchase in the game via microtransactions was purely cosmetic.
Of course, Apex Legends also presented Respawn with a challenge it had never faced before: that of a live service game. According to Respawn design director Mackey McCandlish, the studio wanted this to be “a ten-year game,” akin to something like League of Legends. The launch was a success, without a doubt, but the developer now had to figure out how to keep players invested for years to come.
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
Passing Time
In order to keep players invested, Respawn wanted to pursue an aggressive schedule of new and rotating content. This kicked off in March 2019, one month after Apex Legends’s launch, with the release of the game’s first official “season,” as well as its first Battle Pass. Similar to games like Fortnite, the Battle Pass allowed players to buy in and unlock a series of cosmetic rewards throughout the season by playing games and completing challenges. It was a way to keep the servers full and reward dedicated players with new stuff to show off.
As with most Battle Pass systems, players could choose to just play for free and win a smaller number of rewards without purchasing the full Pass. For the spenders, Apex Legends’s Season 1 Battle Pass was released for a price of 950 Apex Coins. A pack of 1,000 Apex Coins costs $9.99, so essentially the Pass was just under $10. Alternatively, players could purchase the “Battle Pass Bundle” for 2,800 Apex Coins, which would instantly unlock 25 levels of content on the Pass. This pricing has stayed the same throughout the life of Apex.
Though it was a step in the right direction, the Season 1 Battle Pass received some criticism from the community, who felt that it was lacking compared to Battle Passes offered by similar games like Fortnite—games that had already had a bit of time to refine their own approach. Many felt that the cosmetics offered as rewards for Apex Legends’s Battle Pass felt weak in quality and limited in number, and that the best and most visually appealing cosmetics were clearly saved for purchase on the store outside of the Pass. Others noted that receiving character skins through the Battle Pass felt less impactful in Apex Legends than Fortnite, because Apex Legends is first-person and players couldn’t see whichever skin they chose while playing.
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
Whatever the concerns with the Battle Pass, no one could accuse Respawn of skimping on content. Each season of the game would run for approximately three to four months, and in addition to a new Battle Pass and new cosmetics, each season would include the launch of a new playable legend, plus regular new modes, new maps, new weapons, big visual and geographic shake-ups to existing maps, major balance changes, social features, and more.
Still, the developer wanted the Battle Pass to be more exciting to players. In response to criticisms, they launched a revised version of the Pass in November 2020, as part of Season 7 of Apex Legends. This new system was meant to be easier to track and provide more rewards to players. Unfortunately, Respawn found itself facing backlash yet again. This time players said the Battle Pass was too grindy. In an effort to make the pass last longer and keep players engaged for a whole season, the studio had created a system where players felt like they had to play constantly to even complete the Pass in time.
To Respawn’s credit, it was quick to respond. Shortly after the launch of Season 7 and the revised Battle Pass system, Respawn director of communications and community Ryan Rigney wrote the following on a Reddit thread:
“I don’t know how else to respond to this other than by saying, bluntly, we aren’t masters of manipulation. We actually just screwed this one up. Today in a meeting with a bunch of leads, Chad Grenier, our game director, was like, ‘Hey, I played for six hours last night, why did I only get one level?’ And like three other people chimed in to go, basically, yes, Reddit is right, this feels bad, and somebody should’ve called it out earlier.”
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
Major changes were soon implemented, and over time the furor died down. A big part of Apex Legends’s success, despite the occasional dustup with players, is thanks to Respawn not just promising but delivering on a very aggressive content schedule. Since Season 1’s launch in March 2019, the studio has successfully stuck to a cadence of new seasons every three to four months, with each new season including a new playable legend. As of May 2022, Apex Legends has just begun its thirteenth season, and its playable roster has jumped from eight characters at launch to twenty-one today. The studio has also added regular limited time and holiday-themed events to keep players engaged even later in a season’s cycle.
There’s no greater testament to Apex Legends’s continued success than just how much attention it continues to pull in on streaming video platforms like Twitch. After a first month at the top, Apex has settled into a regular spot in the top five list of games being played, and it regularly achieves anywhere from eighty to two hundred thousand viewers, even when there’s not new content to jump into.
If they never quite managed it with the two mainline Titanfall games, Respawn had managed to build an impressively lasting accomplishment in Apex Legends. But the studio still wasn’t done cementing its legacy.
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
The Move to Mobile
While Apex Legends had proven a true contender to established competition like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on PC and consoles, it was still noticeably absent on a platform where those games had already made huge strides: mobile.
In February 2021, after months of rumors and years of requests from fans, Respawn Entertainment finally announced that Apex Legends Mobile was in development. However, then-game director Chad Grenier was clear that this would not be a one-to-one port of the PC/console version. Setting it apart from Fortnite, it also would not feature cross-platform play, or the ability for mobile players to team up with or go against PC and console players.
“[Apex Legends Mobile is] specially designed for mobile devices, with streamlined controls for touchscreen and thoughtful optimizations that result in the most advanced battle royale combat available on a phone,” Grenier said at the time. “It’s a new version of Apex Legends but remains true to the original game.”
As betas and regional testing opportunities came and went, players realized just how much the mobile version of Apex Legends would be truly separate from its big sibling. The early tests showed off a pared down roster of characters, maps, and modes, and it also seemed to indicate that Apex Legends Mobile would have its own version of the Battle Pass rather than a shared Pass between console/PC and mobile.
Image Credited to Apex Legends Mobile | Respawn Entertainment | EA
And that brings us to...now! Apex Legends Mobile finally launched this week, after just over a year-long wait. Players have quickly discovered the many ways in which it is distinct from its predecessor.
Apex Legends Mobile arrived with only nine legends from the current roster of the original game, but it also had a surprise addition of a tenth mobile-exclusive legend, Fade. Since it was meant to be a surprise, Fade became the first legend to be added to Apex Legends without any sort of introductory trailer detailing his backstory. Instead, Apex Legends Mobile players are able to unlock the six parts of Fade’s lore using a special currency gained during one of the launch events. The unexpected reveal of a new character who isn’t available on the console/PC version has been a brilliant way to pull in the attention of even those players who don’t claim to care about the mobile game.
While it’s too early to have official numbers for Apex Legends Mobile’s success, we can confidently say that it’s a really fantastic mobile version of an already great game. You can read more about that in our official review. And though we don’t know exactly how many people are playing it across Android and iOS, the Google Play Store reports that the game has already been installed over ten million times in the two days since its launch.
According to EA’s fiscal year 2022 quarter 4 earnings call, Apex Legends has made over two billion dollars since its launch in 2019. With the launch of Apex Legends Mobile bringing the game to an even bigger audience on mobile devices around the world, there’s all the opportunity in the world for that already astounding number to grow.
Nowhere to go but up, right?
Here’s hoping.
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The Rise and Sunset of Apex Legends Mobile: A Remarkable Journey
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**Introduction to Apex Legends**
Apex Legends, developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts (EA), is a high-octane battle royale-hero shooter game. The game started making waves in the gaming community with its release on various platforms, including PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, in February 2019. Apex Legends stood out due to its unique blend of character-driven gameplay, squad-based tactics, and innovative communication systems like the nonverbal "ping" system. Each character, known as a Legend, brought different abilities and styles to the team, enriching the game's strategic depth.
Level 08 YT17K2024-03-03
| The Demise Of Apex Legends Mobile: An Ea Decision |
Electronic Arts (EA) made the difficult choice to shut down Apex Legends Mobile, leaving many fans bewildered and disappointed. The decision stemmed from various factors, including technical challenges, resource allocation, and strategic reevaluation. Despite the immense popularity of the franchise, EA faced hurdles in delivering a seamless mobile experience. Moreover, shifting priorities within the gaming industry and evolving market dynamics prompted EA to reassess its mobile gaming portfolio. While the closure saddened many, EA's decision reflects the complex landscape of game development and the need to adapt to changing circumstances.
MsRandoM7620K2024-03-29
Why Apex Legends Mobile Shutdown
NAME: Apex legends
PLATFORM: Mobile
PUBLISHER: Respawn Entertainment
The most shocking announcement of 2023 is when Respawn Entertainment announced they going to Shutdown Apex legends Mobile, leaving the gaming community in shock and speculation.
One of the primary reasons for the shutdown revolves around the inherent challenges of developing a high-quality mobile version of a complex game like Apex Legends. Respawn faced numerous technical hurdles in adapting the intricate mechanics and graphics of the original game to mobile platforms without compromising the user experience.
Ram0921K2024-01-18
View desktop siteTapTap looks better
on the app 
I haven't played this game before... but it's only for ps 4?? or Android phone ??
2022-05-24
The original Apex Legends is on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Apex Legends Mobile is on Android and iOS
2022-05-24
What’s next history of the game? I love this series!
2022-05-20
Author likedThank you, Jason! We have a long list of games we'd like to do but haven't decided what's next for sure yet. Hopefully it will be up in the next couple of weeks. :)
2022-05-20
Oh man this is great
2022-05-19
Author likedthank you! 😊 very glad you enjoyed it
2022-05-19