Epic Games hasn’t seen “any visible cut into Fortnite” with the release of Apex Legends, CEO Tim Sweeney said in an interview to VentureBeat. “We hit a Fortnite non-event peak twice after Apex was out.”
Though Fortnite was taken over by Apex as the most watched game on Twitch for a few days, the competitor battle royale title apparently had little effect on player counts.
“What Apex Legends has done is re-energized a lot of shooter players, people who come in and out of shooters depending on what’s popular,” Sweeney said. Instead of taking players away from Fortnite, Sweeney said the game “gained an Apex Legends worth of Fortnite players” since then. “We’re very close to hitting 250 million Fortnite players.”
Related: Apex Legends vs. Fortnite Player Count—which game has more players?
Contrary to what some people were expecting, it seems that the only true competitor of Fortnite at the moment is FIFA.
“The only game you can see where its peaks cut into Fortnite playtime is FIFA. It’s another game for everybody, wildly popular around the world.”
He said that new battle royale games are actually good because they add “their unique spin to it and advancing the state of the industry.”
Apex might not be the Fortnite killer , then. Fortnite seems to be increasing in popularity while the honeymoon effect that Apex players and its developer seemed to have is now gone, with streamers more vocal about game issues and players openly criticizing new features such as the newly-implemented season one Battle Pass.
Even so, other genres prove that two competitors can coexist for now and be successful to different extents, like League of Legends and Dota 2 in the MOBA world. If Apex continues growing like it’s been, with over $90 million made in its first month and over 50 million players registered worldwide, we might see a future where both Apex and Fortnite are popular without either truly fading out.
