Apex Legends, published by EA and developed by Respawn Entertainment, has taken the games market by storm—in terms of playing and viewing alike. In fact, our data for February so far shows that the game is by far the #1 most watched title on Twitch, already boasting 63.7 million live hours watched, and it has been played by an impressive number of core PC gamers across many key markets. The surprise release seemingly dropped out of nowhere on February 4—with barely any marketing leading up to its launch. Yet, the overnight success of this free-to-play battle royale title was no mistake: it was a result of the flawless execution of a well-thought-out strategy.

Apex Legends is one of the best-orchestrated game releases we have ever seen. In terms of gameplay mechanics, it takes inspiration from some of the market’s biggest successes of the past five years, blending the gameplay of battle royale titles like PUBG and Fortnite, and character shooters such as Overwatch and Paladins. Its performance so far speaks for itself. Respawn CEO Vince Zampella recently announced the game pulled in 25 million players in its first week, peaking at two million concurrent players. In this article, we will use data from our Game Streaming Tracker and PC Game Tracker to look at the game’s release, explaining how it has captured the attention of the entire games business.

Bypassing Pre-Release Marketing and Leveraging Top-Streamers’ Audiences

In recent years, game streaming has been pivotal to the success of many of the games market’s biggest games, including Overwatch, League of Legends, PUBG, and Fortnite. Naturally, if big streamers consistently stream a game, it is far more likely to be a hit. EA and Respawn saw the organic growth battle royale games garnered via game-streaming platforms and streamers, and decided to involve well-known streamers such as Shroud early in the development process. This was before even the games media knew Apex existed. EA and Respawn also held a streamer-only event shortly before the game was unveiled and launched.

Every day since its launch, Apex Legends has been the most-watched game by live hours across Twitch and YouTube Gaming. Between launch and 14 February, the game generated 63.7 million hours of live viewership on Twitch (by total hours), as shown by our Game Streaming Tracker. This is more than any other game, including League of Legends (55.4 million hours) and Fortnite (53.3 million). On the day Apex launched, some of the world’s most popular streamers, including Shroud, Ninja, and DrDisrespect, streamed it, helping the game generate 1.6 million live viewership hours on Twitch. The following day, live viewership on Twitch almost quadrupled (6.3 million hours). Viewership had a slight dip on February 7 (5.1 million hours), but it has risen again since then, peaking at 8.3 million hours watched on 12 February. So far, Shroud has produced over two-and-a-half times more live viewership hours than any other streamer.

The Perfect Storm: Learning from the Lessons of Existing Games

In addition to the streamer-first approach, the game also made many quality-of-life improvements to the battle-royale genre. Communication is vital for teams who want to perform well in battle royale games, but not every player has a headset. Using a clever in-game “ping” system, Apex allows players to communicate non-verbally—a potential game-changer for the genre. Another barrier for player enjoyment of battle royale games is that they only get one chance; if a player is eliminated, they can no longer play in the match. Apex offsets this frustration by allowing players to be revived even after they have been eliminated.

The surprise launch was also a strategy to offset potential negative press and player reactions—two groups who have responded negatively to lootboxes and free-to-play games in the past. EA knows this backlash all too well, following the negative reception surrounding the release of Star Wars Battlefront 2.

“We’re doing a free-to-play game, with essentially lootboxes, after we were bought by EA, and it’s not Titanfall 3. It’s the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that? Let’s just ship the game and let players play,” said the game’s lead producer, Drew McCoy, in a recent interview.

The game’s streamer-first approach to promotion and marketing, as well as its fine-tuned gameplay and free-to-play model, has drawn in core PC gamers in droves. According to our PC Game Tracker, from February 6 to 10, the game was played by over a fifth of core PC gamers across some of the world’s biggest countries/markets by game revenues, including the U.S. (21% of core PC gamers), Japan (23%), the U.K. (21%), and France (20%). Of all the core PC players in the U.S. who played in this period, 22% also played Fortnite, 14% also played CS:GO, and 10% also played Overwatch, meaning there was plenty of crossover between Apex and the games that inspired it. Our upcoming PC Game Tracker post will dive into the churn numbers from these titles to Apex, so look out for that at the beginning of March.

What’s Next for Apex Legends?

In an increasingly games-as-a-service-centric market, EA and Respawn have their eyes set on longevity for Apex, in terms of playing, watching, and esports. There is already a sound strategy in place for the game, as shown by the Apex’s year-one roadmap, which outlines a steady stream of content from now until December, including a battle pass (likely similar to Fortnite’s paid seasonal battle pass), as well as new weapons, characters, and cosmetics. All in all, Apex is the most significant entrant to the battle royale arena since Fortnite.

Despite releasing this month, the title’s esports scene is already well on its way, thanks to more strategic decisions involving streamers. Respawn teamed up with Twitch for the Twitch Rivals Apex Legends Challenge, an esports competition featuring 48 top streamers, including DrDisrespect, Summit1G, CocoTaco, Shroud, and Ninja, who are competing for a piece of the $200,000 prize pool. The tournament is taking place across two days—the first part already happened on February 12, while the second part is due to take place next week On February 19. This is a smart strategy for increasing the longevity of the game’s Twitch viewership. Other battle royale titles that showed promise, including Realm Royale, enjoyed high viewership initially, but this significantly decreased soon after.

Again, the results were striking. The first part of Apex’s first official tournament generated 3.7 million hours of live viewership on Twitch. Almost a quarter (24%) of this viewership was generated by Shroud, 16% by Ninja, and 13% by DrDisrespect, compared to 12% from the official Twitch Rivals channel. The future of Apex’s esports scene is looking promising, with many organizations, including FNATIC, already rallying to create a team for the game. Similarly, Team Liquid has already built a stream team for the title, and 100 Thieves is doing the same. Across the board, things are looking bright for this disruptive new release. We will use our pioneering data to continuously and extensively keep track of Apex, for playing, streaming, and esports.

Newzoo’s Game Streaming and Core PC Game Analytics

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Interested in tracking the world’s most viewed games, identify top streamers, or pinpoint esports heroes? Newzoo’s Game Streaming Tracker offers the most comprehensive overview of the game-streaming market.

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