Every year, Apex Legends celebrates the anniversary of its shadow drop on February 4, 2019, and while it was rumored and leaked online ahead of time, there’s an argument to be made that it’s the most successful shadow-dropped game in history. And yet, even knowing that, saying Apex Legends is currently seven years old feels a bit like an understatement. The popular battle royale game from Respawn Entertainment has changed massively season after season, and to say it turns 30 with the launch of Season 30 on August 4 feels more accurate than saying it’s 7.
A 7-year-old child will proudly declare they are 7 when asked, but by their 30s, several folks begin to lie about their age. Coincidentally, Apex Legends‘ seasonal marketing used to include a Season Number and a Subtitle, dating all the way back to Apex Legends Season 1: Wild Frontier, but between Season 9 and Season 16, Apex Legends started hiding the numbers more and more. Of course, the logic is there: big numbers scare off newcomers, franchises often drop them for similar reasons after a few games, and so forth. Needless to say, Apex Legends acts like a 30-year-old, not a 7-year-old, so I asked developers about turning Season 30 during a recent interview.
Apex Legends is 30 Seasons Old
30 Seasons is a long time, and in those 30 seasons, many gaming trends have come and gone. In some cases, they have left and come back; in others, they’ve died off. Yes, Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends launched around the height of battle royale game popularity, but it’s one of the few still standing at all today. Yes, it has lost players, and it has seen players flock back. It saw players through COVID-19, and it tried to follow players to new platforms (RIP Apex Legends Mobile). Famously, Apex Legends devs said solos would never come back, and then it brought Solos back, and then there were Quads. It has played it safe, and it has experimented.
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It has won and it has lost, and yet, 30 seasons later, it’s still bringing players new content: a reworked Bloodhound, updates to World’s Edge, a continuously evolving weapon and loot meta, and more. And when I asked Eric Canavese, Respawn Entertainment associate design director, how it felt for Apex Legends to turn 30 seasons old, he said,
“It’s an interesting feeling for sure. I mean, I was there too on day zero. I didn’t work on Apex day zero, but I worked at EA day zero, and we were there the day it dropped. And in the office, we all lost our minds. I remember none of us worked on our projects for at least three days, and we all just came into the office and played Apex every day, and we were absolutely hooked. I played it every night for a long time…for a long time. And then when I got the opportunity to work on it, it was just like Synergy. I was so excited. I’ve been working on it since.”
Apex Legends is understandably something special for Canavese, as I have no doubt it is for tons of Apex Legends devs who worked on it over the years. For me, I was there on day zero and can still remember my very first win. I was playing Gibraltar, and my squad and I were just outside Thunder Dome on OG Kings Canyon. With the way the ring closed, the enemies had to run toward us, and I was able to drop my Ult on top of them. My squad and I then picked off our 1v1s as they took damage, and I caught mine around the corner with the Alternator.
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I still play with the same friends I have since day one, although one is more actively attached to Overwatch, and it’s a major reason that I have been able to stay connected with them, as I have, over the past 30 seasons of my own life. That’s not to say we haven’t taken breaks, including a long one, or that we’ve all always been happy with the state of Apex Legends, but that group chat has remained open for 30 seasons. Canavese’s comment continues in a way that I can only imagine echoing my own sentiment,
“For it to have gone this long and for the game to have touched so many people and brought happiness and joy to that many people and continue to do that—like we’re still going strong this many years later, this many seasons later—I don’t know, man, it is something special. It’s something special to be a part of. I’m happy to share it with like these guys and everybody on the team, and I think everybody is just equally as proud of the project as I am. It’s a magical thing, and I’m super proud to be a part of it.”
The battle royale genre isn’t as popular as it once was, but perhaps it’ll swing back around one day. If that happens, then it seems likely that Apex Legends will still be standing as the premier hero shooter/battle royale game hybrid on the market. Whether that’s season 40, 50, or 60. Apex Legends could feel like a completely different game at that time, but whatever comes, two things can be certain in the universe of Apex Legends: death and your randos playing Octane (or Wraith) and pushing a fight on their own.
- Released
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February 4, 2019
- ESRB
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Teen / Blood, Violence, Users Interact, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)
- Publisher(s)
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Electronic Arts
