Apex Legends Cellular was purported to be marking its first anniversary proper now. As a substitute, the video games’ servers have been shut down utterly.
Again on Feb. 1 itself, EA made the shocking announcement that it will likely be “sunsetting” Apex Legends Cellular on Could 1, 2023. This got here amidst a bigger shift away from cellular video games for the developer, which additionally introduced the halting of the event of Battlefield Cellular on the identical day.
Whereas followers of the sport ran an #SaveApexMobile campaign to cease the title from shutting down, the sport’s servers have been taken offline nonetheless.
Quick historical past for the legendary cellular shooter
Earlier than the discharge of Apex Legends Cellular, many touted the sport because the revolutionary title for the cellular shooter style. It wasn’t unusual to see the occasional “CoD Cellular killer” or “PUBG Cellular killer” floating round in mentions of the sport on Reddit or Twitter.
Nevertheless, when it was launched on Could 17, 2022, the story was utterly completely different. EA first talked about Apex Cellular in an earnings name again in 2019 so the sport was underneath growth for fairly a while. Regardless of this, the preliminary international launch model was riddled with bugs. There have been even “bug compilation” movies for the sport on YouTube.
It’s to be famous that the sport was developed in partnership with Tencent’s Lightspeed & Quantum Studios – the identical studio behind PUBG Cellular.
Apex Cellular had big hype round its preliminary launch, however a lot of it was killed due to issues with the sport. A shooter riddled with bugs and poor optimization is a giant turn-off for any participant who can simply keep on with the sleek expertise provided by different established opponents like CoD Cellular, PUBG Cellular, and Free Fireplace. It begs the query that if EA had launched a better-developed model of the sport, it wouldn’t have met this destiny now.
Nevertheless, EA shortly labored on fixing the bugs and utterly turned the sport round. With back-to-back content material updates and bug fixes, it even earned the Cellular Sport of the Yr award from each Google and Apple.
Regardless of this, the sport wasn’t capable of re-establish a participant base. A Sensor Tower report from February reveals that the sport’s income earlier than the shutdown announcement was 96 p.c down for the reason that international launch, whereas CoD Cellular’s income grew seven p.c in the identical timeframe.
Will Apex Legends Cellular ever come again?
EA launched an emotional farewell letter to its gamers earlier than the sport was shut down. It thanked the followers for his or her help and stated that it hoped to see them on console and PC.
Followers have nonetheless been questioning whether or not the sport will ever come again.
Within the Q3 FY23 Quarterly Results, the CEO of EA, Andrew Wilson spoke in regards to the sport shutting down. He stated that the sport is being shut down for failing to fulfill the expectations of the gamers.
He added that EA may introduce a “reimagined and related Apex cellular expertise” sooner or later. Whereas this doesn’t imply that Apex Legends Cellular could possibly be returning any time quickly, it nonetheless signifies that Apex’s story on the cellular platform may not have ended but.
