August is here and with it comes the planned boycott of Apex Legends. The plan gained steam near the middle of season 13 on Reddit and Twitter among disgruntled Apex players. The hashtag #NoApexAugust gained mobility, with players hoping to force Respawn to reckon with broken legend abilities, hit registration issues, cheating, and more long-standing problems like the game’s audio.
But now that it’s officially Aug. 1… well, it doesn’t seem like many people have actually stopped playing Apex at all.
While there’s no way to tell exactly how many people are playing Apex across all the platforms the game is available on, Steam Charts is a good way to gauge how popular or unpopular a game is, as one of the most far-reaching and popular PC platforms to play games. And according to that platform, Apex is just as popular as ever.
At time of writing, Apex is the fifth-most popular game on Steam by concurrent players, with over 300,000 people playing the game. That’s almost double the number of people playing the sixth-most popular game, Grand Theft Auto V.
A lot of that probably has to do with Respawn fixing a lot of the issues that #NoApexAugust cited as a reason for boycotting the game. Loba’s teleporter bracelet has finally been corrected, as have the maddening hit registration issues on Wraith when she comes out of her ability usage. The game even may have added a new anti-cheat system in the latter half of the season.
With a new season coming up and a host of map and weapon changes coming in season 14, it seems like the #NoApexAugust movement ended before it actually started. It’s possible that a more concerted effort comes from players as the month wears on, but for now, Apex is back on the menu for August.
Season 14 of Apex kicks off on Aug. 9.
Published: Aug 1, 2022 11:09 am