‘Apex Legends’ Lost 70% Of Its Steam Players In 2024

Apex Legends

Respawn

EA just published an earnings report that specifically cited FC 25 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. But another underreported story of 2024 was the drastic drop we saw from EA’s prized battle royale, Apex Legends.

Over 2024, Apex Legends showed the biggest drop in overall Steam concurrent players the game has ever seen. From a high of 470,696 in February 2024 to 140,830 at the very end of December. Now, it’s still going down, 122,776 as of yesterday. But that 2024 drop is losing a full 70% of its playerbase on the platform, and there’s no reason to imagine that console is not trending similarly.

Apex Legends slowly rose in popularity from its debut on Steam in February of 2022 before reaching a peak a year later in February 2023 of 624,473 players. But since then, it’s been nothing but a significant downward slope, with the steepest angle being across 2024.

Apex Legends

Steamdb

120,000-140,000 players a night is certainly not nothing, and something many other live service games would kill for at this point. But a 70% drop in a single year is not something that EA or Respawn wants to see, and this did set off alarm bells back in October 2024, where EA talked about recent developments and its plans going forward:

“Following changes to the battle pass construct, we did not see the lift in monetization we had expected. Two things have become clear in the free-to-play FPS category. First, in the competitive landscape where brand, a strong core player base and high quality mechanics matter more than ever, ‘Apex’ has proven to be a compelling franchise for us and an industry stalwart. Second, to drive significant growth and reengagement, large systematic change is required. We will continue to focus on retention and breadth of content in service of our global community as we work towards more significant, innovative changes in the future.”

That was October, and things have only kept declining from there here into 2025. Why did this happen throughout the year? A number of reasons, but chief among them: monetization.

The amount of monetization in the game has ramped up significantly, whether that’s a cost to access the battle pass, as referenced above, and a full dozen microtransaction-infused collection events over the course of 2024. Recently, they’re reportedly adding a “mythic grenade” which for many people feels like the ultimate form of desperation for cash. A common complaint is that it feels like they’re simply milking the dedicated players they have left.

Then there’s the amount of content, where in 2024 it was…lacking, to say the least. There was only a single new legend released the entire year, and one new BR map. Zero new weapons were introduced. Seasons blurred together as the year had as much content as some games do in their own individual seasons. New hero shooter Marvel Rivals is now releasing several maps and 2-4 heroes per season, at present. It feels like support for Apex is scaling way down as monetization scales up, and as such, the player declines are accelerating dramatically.

Clearly these issues did not alienate the entire fanbase. As shown, a good amount are still showing up daily. But...70% less than a year ago. After seven years it feels like Apex is winding down and everytime I talk about this the same two words keep coming up.

Titanfall 3.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.