It’s hard to think of a recent game that’s had a more explosive start than Apex Legends. Despite Respawn’s fears of a potential PR disaster due to the battle royale genre and loot boxes, it seems the surprise release plan has worked exceptionally well, as Apex Legends has hit a whopping 50 million players after four weeks.
The figures come from Respawn CEO Vince Zampella, who shared a short highlights video on his Twitter account. There are also some fun stats there covering in-game mechanics, such as a whopping 31bn pings placed and 1.23bn ultimates activated. I particularly enjoyed the Mozambique stat.
The new figure means Apex Legends has managed to double its player base from when the previous stat of 25 million was released on 12th February. To put the remarkable numbers in context, even king of battle royale Fortnite saw a far slower increase in player base, taking 16 weeks to reach 45 million players. Here’s a chart to help you visualise things:
Source: Eurogamer Apex Legends player base rockets up to 50 million