Anti-Apex Legends #NoApexAugust campaign fails spectacularly

It’s not a universal maxim, but in many cases there’s no surer sign that a game is alive and well than when waves of players start calling it a “dead game.” The most recent example is Apex Legendswhich just broke an all-time player record in the midst of a coordinated – I use that word liberally – social media campaign asking players to opt out of the game for a month.

Apex Legendsa free-to-play first-person shooter that some people still call it Why aren’t you Titanfall 3?, which launched three years ago amid the industry’s battle royale boom. Though it seemed experimental at first, it was an entertaining, if short-lived, multiplayer pit stop between developer Respawn’s blockbusters (like titanium fall and Jedi: Fallen Order), apex quickly adopted a seasonal model. It has been running the live service train ever since and is now in its 14th season. Which brings us to #NoApexAugust, a community initiative to highlight various issues fans are having with the game.

#NoApexAugust has mostly organized itself around a hashtag on Twitter, although its genesis can be traced a Reddit post from last month. First, one player suggested a one-day strike Apex Legends. The post exploded. complaints about Apex Legends poured in (the first post has 1,000+ replies), and it eventually morphed into the idea that the community would take a whole month off the game.

The idea of ​​#NoApexAugust was to spur Respawn and publisher EA into action and address what players see as issues with the game: the high-ping servers…or the lack of cross-progression…or the overpriced cosmetics…or the lack of it, or the interesting cosmetics…or the amount of specific items that some say are too powerful…or, look, players face a variety of different issues, many of which seem minor on their own, but add up to a larger rallying cry “Please fix the game” condense.

Just outside the gate, #NoApexAugust stuttered. Some people pointed this out that the player base actually elevated (albeit slightly) in the first two days of the month, immediately after the campaign launch. And just yesterday – once again while #NoApexAugust was reportedly in full swing –Apex Legends set his all-time record of players on Steam: 510,286 players, according to the stat tracking database Steam Charts. (The previous record of 411,183 was set in May. However, these numbers do not take into account players on consoles.)

Some dead game.

Apparently, #NoApexAugust failed spectacularly in its intended goal of getting players to stop playing Apex Legends. Due to the obvious irony, you are allowed at least one (1) giggle. That a social campaign is deserved at all – messy execution aside – draws attention to very real issues players are having with the game. These shouldn’t be ignored, even if players are coming out in record numbers.

Representative for EA that publishes Apex Legendsdid not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.