Apex Legends Hits 1 Million Players, There's No Titanfall 3 Coming

So as you've probably heard, Titanfall developer Respawn decided to launch a brand-new game, Apex Legends, yesterday. It came as an enormous surprise to most people, as we might have only had a day or two warning before the game was thrust into our laps. And thus, there’s a whole lot we still don’t know about the game – or at least, a whole lot more I don’t know about the game, because I don’t really plan to play it.

But either it’s way better than I was expecting or curiosity is a bigger people mover than I gave it credit for, because apparently within eight hours of going live, Arux Legends secured over a million players. That’s not bad for a free-to-play Battle Royale game that’s looking to compete against the biggest video game currently in the world (or ever, one could argue).

However, all this good news comes at a cost: when people first realized that Respawn, the company best known for the critically-praised Titanfall, was working on a battle royale game set in the same universe, they assumed that it was going to be some kind of filler game to remind people they exist before Titanfall 3 came out, as Respawn had very publically said they were working on that title.

However, as it turns out, that’s not the case: when EA bought Respawn back in 2017, they used all the work they had put into a prospective Titanfall 3 and made them turn it into Apex Legends. Or, to put it another way: there is no Titanfall 3 coming.

Or, as Respawn producer Drew McCoy told Eurogamer:

“The world thinks we’re making Titanfall 3 and we’re not - this is what we’re making. To try and convince a skeptical audience for months with trailers and hands-on articles, we’re just like, ‘Let the game speak for itself’ - it’s the most powerful antidote to potential problems. We’re doing a free to play game, with essentially loot boxes, after we were bought by EA, and it’s not Titanfall 3. It’s the perfect recipe for a marketing plan to go awry, so why have that - let’s just ship the game and let players play.”

He's… not wrong. There’s a lot of stuff not to like in that synopsis, and if they had been more forthcoming with their plans then people would have likely dismissed the game without giving it a chance. But by keeping it a mystery, they’ve managed to get a lot of players in a very short time.

…But now we’re still left to wonder if they can keep them.