Apex Legends fans can say farewell to Arenas, but fans are getting a long-anticipated upgrade when the shooter’s season 16 launches on Feb. 14. Respawn Entertainment will retire the mode in the next season, Revelry, developers revealed in a press conference ahead of the new season. The team also gave fans a taste of its successor, the promising Mixtape playlist.
Arenas didn’t meet Respawn’s goal of “being a good place to practice the core combat loop in a less-pressure situation,” Nikolich said. To him, the BR is the “high-stakes competitive space, and Arenas overlaps a bit too much with that.”
The team wanted to create an environment where players could practice with lower stakes. The team is taking that measure through two means: first, the introduction of a Team Deathmatch mode for the first three weeks of season 16, called Revelry. After the three-week window ends, Respawn is debuting the Mixtape playlist, which contains popular game modes such as Gun Run, Control, and Team Deathmatch. This playlist will be permanent.
The modes in Mixtape allow players to practice their gun skills without too much pressure, due to their lower stakes and infinite respawns. Players can also pick between preset loadouts in Control and Team Deathmatch, while Gun Run forces them to try out a myriad of weapons.
Arenas has been a part of Apex since it launched during season nine in May 2021. The three-vs-three mode played more similarly to VALORANT or CS:GO, with buy rounds and an economy based on crafting materials. A Ranked version of Arenas followed in season 10, but the mode fell off in popularity. Though it was supposed to be a more contained, practice-friendly place where players could focus on gunplay, it fell off in popularity due to being deemed too sweaty.
Arenas also had its significance in the lore. Legends like Octane, Rampart, and Seer passed through the Arenas in-universe before stamping their tickets to the Apex Games. Ash also emerged as the Arenas game master before officially being inducted into the roster in season 11. Though the Arenas mode will be removed, players might still see some mentions of the Arenas all over the Outlands in the lore.
Players can mourn Arenas and dive into Team Deathmatch starting on Feb. 14, and the Mixtape playlist debuts on March 7.
