Epic Games have turned to a peculiar tactic to fight against Apex Legends' explosive first-week growth, as the Respawn Entertainment title aims to topple Fortnite.


Since its release on February 4, the free-to-play battle royale game has sparked plenty of praise and taken the gaming world by storm. On February 7, Respawn Entertainment announced that the game had crossed the 10 million players mark within the first 72 hours of its release.

Players have already questioned Apex Legends’ chances of challenging a juggernaut like Fortnite, and it now it looks as if Epic Games are taking the challenge quite seriously.


Users who perform a Google search for the phrase "Apex Legends" now have a chance of receiving an advert about Fortnite, at the very top of the search results, that will take them directly to the Epic Games website.

As both titles are free-to-play battle royale games, there is plenty of crossover between keywords and resulting searches - meaning that the ads would fall under Google’s targeted advertising where companies can select a target audience at which to push their promotions.


Whether or not Apex can be the game that fills the role as the ‘Fortnite killer’ remains to be seen. Even some of Fortnite’s biggest names have been given it a chance and having a good time in the process.

Even Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins believes the game has a chance, but it’ll take an incredible amount of hard work from Respawn.

"I mean anything any game has a chance to go over Fortnite, but it's going to be nearly impossible," Ninja said on his February 8 stream. "But this game specifically? It's anyone's guess at this point. I think it's going to be nearly impossible for anyone to do what Fortnite has done, and what they continue to do day in and day out and update their game."