Apex Legends Breaks Records During Season 9 Launch

Apex Legends’ new Legacy season launched this week, and though it had some significant issues [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Apex Legends' new Legacy season launched this week, and though it had some significant issues out the gate that prevented people from playing, it's generated some impressive player counts in such a short time. The Respawn Entertainment game broke its Steam record for peak players on Tuesday and then broke that same record again on Wednesday by a margin of over 50,000 players. Though issues persist with players still sometimes unable to connect to the game and play, more are finding themselves able to hop back into Apex Legends on Wednesday.

Ryan Rigney, the director of communications at Respawn Entertainment, periodically shared updates on the status of Apex Legends Tuesday and Wednesday to show how the game's latest season was going so far. One of those updates from late Wednesday night showed that the game had broken its record for concurrent Steam players with a new all-time peak of 241,882 people playing at once. On Wednesday, that record was broken again with a much higher all-time peak.

Rigney's tweet above set the all-time high at 304,263 players, but even that one was soon trumped by a new total hit not long afterward. According to Steam Database, the current all-time high for Steam is 313,839 players which was hit Wednesday morning.

The graph shared on Steam Database that tracked Apex's player counts over the past few days shows the chaotic story of the new season's launch. As the number of players plummeted right when the season was releasing due to technical issues, the number of people watching the game on Twitch rocketed upwards as players tried to live out their Season 9 plans through others. Twitch viewer numbers went back down to their more typical highs and lows as things in Apex started to smooth out to allow more players into the game with many people obviously rested and renewed and ready to play one day after launch.

Respawn said it'd be calling this new season "Legacy" instead of going by the normal numeral format, though players have still been calling it Season 9 out of habit. It introduced a revamped Olympus map, the new Legend known as Valkyrie, a bow for players to snipe each other with, and most important of all, the new Arenas mode that breaks the battle royale mold. It's a lot packed into one season, so it's not surprising to imagine this one being the season that breaks records.

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