Apex Legends Mobile was supposed to be marking its first anniversary right now. Instead, the games’ servers have been shut down completely.
Back on Feb. 1 itself, EA made the shocking announcement that it will be “sunsetting” Apex Legends Mobile on May 1, 2023. This came amidst a larger shift away from mobile games for the developer, which also announced the halting of the development of Battlefield Mobile on the same day.
While fans of the game ran an #SaveApexMobile campaign to stop the title from shutting down, the game’s servers have been taken offline nonetheless.
Credits: EA
Short history for the legendary mobile shooter
Before the release of Apex Legends Mobile, many touted the game as the revolutionary title for the mobile shooter genre. It wasn’t uncommon to see the occasional “CoD Mobile killer” or “PUBG Mobile killer” floating around in mentions of the game on Reddit or Twitter.
However, when it was released on May 17, 2022, the story was completely different. EA first mentioned Apex Mobile in an earnings call back in 2019 so the game was under development for quite some time. Despite this, the initial global release version was riddled with bugs. There were even “bug compilation” videos for the game on YouTube.
It’s to be noted that the game was developed in partnership with Tencent’s Lightspeed & Quantum Studios – the same studio behind PUBG Mobile.
Apex Mobile had huge hype around its initial release, but much of it was killed because of problems with the game. A shooter riddled with bugs and poor optimization is a big turn-off for any player who can just stick to the smooth experience offered by other established competitors like CoD Mobile, PUBG Mobile, and Free Fire. It begs the question that if EA had released a better-developed version of the game, it wouldn’t have met this fate now.
However, EA quickly worked on fixing the bugs and completely turned the game around. With back-to-back content updates and bug fixes, it even earned the Mobile Game of the Year award from both Google and Apple.
Despite this, the game wasn’t able to re-establish a player base. A Sensor Tower report from February shows that the game’s revenue before the shutdown announcement was 96 percent down since the global release, while CoD Mobile’s revenue grew seven percent in the same timeframe.
Credits: iMore
Will Apex Legends Mobile ever come back?
EA released an emotional farewell letter to its players before the game was shut down. It thanked the fans for their support and said that it hoped to see them on console and PC.
Fans have still been wondering whether the game will ever come back.
In the Q3 FY23 Quarterly Results, the CEO of EA, Andrew Wilson spoke about the game shutting down. He said that the game is being shut down for failing to meet the expectations of the players.
He added that EA could introduce a “reimagined and connected Apex mobile experience” in the future. While this doesn’t mean that Apex Legends Mobile could be returning any time soon, it still indicates that Apex’s story on the mobile platform might not have ended yet.
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