Apex Legends was the talk of the town for quite some time. Hot on the heels of Anthem and packed full of tweaks to content and patches in Season One, it looked liked Respawn Entertainment's star was rising. However, as of late, Apex Legends popularity numbers have been declining, and now there are some stream viewing statistics to prove it.
With well-known streamer, Michael 'Shroud' Grzesiek, threatening to quit the game forever after unaddressed issues by EA in the game, this could well signal the start of a downturn in the Apex Legends popularity matrix. Shroud's complaints were about issues that would appear to affect the overall player base (connection and hitbox issues to name a few), and it looks like people aren't just having problems playing the game; they're also not that keen on watching it on Twitch.
Now, livestreaming platform StreamElements has released a report about the most-streamed games on Twitch and it appears to show a marked decline in Apex Legends' popularity when compared to Fortnite. A trend graph pulled from their report suggests that while Epic Games' numbers have remained steady over time and not enjoyed the explosion that heralded Apex Legends' launch. While Apex Legends started strong at around 40 million views, it's since been in a gradual downward spiral to end March 2019 at around 10 million views while its competition remained strong at double that number.
This downturn in Apex Legends popularity numbers could potentially be surprising. There was a time when it was widely considered that Respawn's title would be able to capitalize off its differences from the current offerings in the Battle Royale arena like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's BATTLEGROUNDS. However, if people aren't tuning in to watch the game, then how involved are they willing to get in terms of actually playing it? The flagging stream views could be an indicator of general Apex Legends popularity amongst the BR community at large.
There has been no comment at this stage from EA or Respawn about the ramifications that these viewing numbers themselves could have on things like Apex Legends popularity with the player base at large. However, it would be a good motivator for the Season 1 Apex Legends content to be re-evaluated; what can the game currently do to draw its community back in and to get streamers and viewers more invested? Looks like Respawn isn't sure of the answer to either question at this stage.
Source: StreamElements