How to create and play a private match in Apex Legends

With the popularity of tournaments like the Apex Legends Global Series, many Apex players get to see the benefits of one of the game’s most important and exclusive features: the custom game. Custom lobbies are the tool by which tournament organizers create and run games where only invited teams can participate.

Custom lobbies aren’t only for professional players in tournaments, however. You might have also seen them used by streamers and other Apex content creators for their own purposes, whether that’s a tournament of their own, or people creating their own unique ways to play Apex.

Still, more people find a use for their own custom Apex games, from pros in a lobby by themselves trying to work out different ways to move around a map to any number of grassroots competitions. 

Whatever the reason you may want to create a custom lobby of your own, it’s clear there are plenty of possibilities once you get into one. Here’s everything to know about creating your own custom game in Apex.

How to create and play a custom game in Apex Legends

Formerly, private matches in Apex weren’t available to everyone. While it seemed so, since Respawn added support for the custom match system to replace the old private match system in season 13, players still needed a code to access a custom match, whether they were trying to play in someone else’s custom game or create their own.

With the introduction of season 15’s Spellbound event, however, that’s all changed. Anyone can create a private match in Apex.

Starting on Jan. 10, any player can create their own private match. To do so, players will need to log into Apex and go to the game mode select screen on the bottom left. When you’ve opened that up, you should notice that there are two tabs on the top of the screen, “Public Match” and “Private Match.” Switch over to the private match tab and select “Create Match.” This will put you into a custom lobby.

After you’ve gotten into the lobby, hit the “Reveal” button in the top right corner of the screen under the field “Join Code.” Once the code is revealed, you can send it to other players to join your private match. You must have 30 players in your lobby to start a standard battle royale private match. You can change the different game modes and settings for the match as well.

If you’re playing in a tournament run by someone else, you’ll need the code for their private match. Follow the same steps as above, but instead of coming up with your own code, enter the one given to you. As long as the correct code was given to you, you should be set to enter a private match, and you’ll just need to ready up to enter the private match lobby where the real fun begins.