Dexerto caught up with iiTzTimmy and ImperialHal, two of the biggest names in Apex Legends, and their concern about the future of the game was impossible for either to hide.
As it stands, Season 23 has peaked at around 225k players on Steam, almost three times less than its February 2023 peak. Average concurrent players have dropped below 100,000 on Steam for the first time since January 2021.
And, while we don’t have access to console numbers, it’s safe to assume that the answer here isn’t that all these PC players went out and decided to buy an Xbox, so a similar story is likely to be true on consoles.
iiTzTimmy and ImperialHal aren’t blind to this decline, and both voiced their fears about the state of Apex.
iiTzTimmy: “For me, as a little bit of a mixed content creator and pro player, I think that when it comes to content… As the game gets progressively older and older, it gets kind of hard to keep up that pace. It’s just that things are no longer impressive to watch anymore because you’ve seen it 1000 times.
“Unless they do a massive overhaul where all the characters are different, guns are different, Apex will never have that fresh feeling. But, it’s pretty difficult right now because they’re trying to cater to the casuals, cater to the pro players… Ultimately, when you choose one side, the other will complain. Where we are right now, the game is very comp-driven. People only watch Apex to watch scrims or watch tournaments.
“I am pretty afraid”
While iiTzTimmy has a repertoire with other games like Valorant, ImperialHal built his name up in Apex alone. When I suggested he risks sinking with the ship, he responded, “I’m driving the boat.”
ImperialHal: “I am pretty afraid. I feel like, the last couple months, there hasn’t been a sign of life, in a way,” he explained. “Apex realizes sh*t is going downhill, but they haven’t showed me personally, and probably a lot of other players, that they’re trying to make good changes and move positively.”
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For Season 23, they reworked the Support class, reworked Lifeline, buffed a whole bunch of support Legends, made some slight balance changes, and brought back OG Apex. Hal argued this isn’t anywhere close to the amount of content Apex needs to keep up with the competition.
Hal: “You can rework all these characters, but the biggest issue with the game isn’t that devs are picking sides, like they’re picking casuals or pros, but more that the fundamental systems of the game are a problem. Both the ranked system and the content in the game. And, not only are they fighting against themselves, but they’re fighting against Black Ops 6, other big games like Valorant, they’re fighting all these other big games and they’re not even matching what they’re giving.
“If you’re not even doing the bare minimum, you’re just gonna go downhill gradually, which is what’s been happening, right? Their biggest problem has always been content. You wait three or four months, new season comes out, they buff a character or two and it’s like… ‘Ok, now this character is meta, but the character’s been in the game, people are playing it.’ But, like, they haven’t made it more popular. There’s nothing new.”
While both Hal and Timmy agreed Apex Legends can return to form, it will only do so if Respawn can implement improvements to tis core systems. Right now, they just need to stem the bleeding.
We also spoke about Legend balancing, where they suggested simply buffing every character and reworking characters from there. As for Ranked, the need for true solo queue was the obvious solution according to Timmy and Hal, but Apex might not be ready for it.
Apex is fighting an uphill battle, but Timmy and Hal are determined to support it until the very end.
