Apex Legends brings back Three Strikes LTM for third time, fueling calls for its permanent addition

Three Strikes has been Apex Legends’ most successful and positively received LTM, and Respawn has been paying attention, now looking to bring back the chaos for the first time in 2024.

A post from the official PlayApex account today teased the return of Three Strikes to Apex, gaining over 150,000 impressions within the first hour of the announcement. The teaser lines up with previously leaked dates from well-known data miner HYPERMYST, which set the LTM’s return for Jan. 30 to Feb. 13, starting immediately after the Apex Legends x Final Fantasy VII Rebirth collaboration event.

Three Strikes was first featured in 2023 from Nov. 7 to 21 as part of the Post Malone crossover event, which featured the lightning-fast twist on the standard battle royale mode. All squads are given three lives and respawn off the drop ship after each team wipe with all of their weapons, gear, and evo shield level. Downed players are completely invincible until their squad wipes out, and reviving only takes one second instead of the standard five seconds while restoring 70 health instead of 20, completely changing the dominant legend meta and strategy to each teamfight.

The fast reviving and never-ending fights create a completely new battle royale experience and give squads a chance to take revenge on the team that previously wiped them, or create montage-worthy plays of holding their ground after waves of enemy respawns, leading to critical acclaim from streamers and pros such as iiTzTimmy, who supported the idea of Three Strikes to stay beyond the event’s duration.

The overall community reception has been overwhelmingly positive to Three Strikes’ inclusion to Apex, being the only LTM besides Armed and Dangerous to return for more than three times in Apex’s four-year lifespan. Fan reception on social media was so popular that Respawn quickly announced a second run for the LTM for another week from Nov. 23 to 28, two days after the Post Malone event.

During Three Strikes’ rerun, the LTM was featured in its own separate playlist from normal Trios, appearing right next to the Mixtape playlist where Arenas’ playlist slot used to be, fueling community calls for its permanent inclusion to Apex, such as fan petitions that have gathered thousands of signatures over both event durations.

Respawn has already shown in-game that Three Strikes can run independently from the standard battle royale format, and can even be added to the Mixtape game mode rotation just like Control, which also started as a popular returning LTM before becoming a permanent inclusion to Apex in season 16.