Apex’s Twitch performance has also caused EA’s stock price to fall.
The new Season of Apex Legends launched last week and included a whole host of changes, including the addition of new hero Wattson, the new gun the L-STAR, and map changes to keep the game fresh, with new content in the Battle Pass to entice players back.
However, this doesn’t seem to have helped viewership of the game as the number of users watching the game on Twitch has failed to see a significant boost. While the game’s second season seems to have gone down reasonably well (Disruptor rounds aside), it’s been unable to inspire a rise in viewership numbers despite support from some active broadcasters such as Shroud. DrDisrespect’s hiatus could also be affecting the game’s viewership as it hovers around a peak of 50k viewers, much lower than its earlier number of over 100,000.
It’s also subsequently affected the share price at EA as the stock price has fallen by over 5%. Apex Launched in February and helped oversee a rise in stock shares at EA due to the performance of the game early on, so this could be seen as the price balancing out after the initial hype of the game.
The Free-to-Play battle royale, set in the Titanfall universe, may also have seen it’s viewership suffer at the hands of the rise of Auto Chess games, where DOTA 2 Auto Chess, Dota Underlords, and League of Legends spin-off Teamfight Tactics have been proving incredibly popular, especially the latter. Whether they will see a similar drop in viewership numbers to Apex remains to be seen.
