EA’s stock price fell five percent yesterday, and it might be related to the start of Apex Legends season two, according to a report by CNBC.
Season two began on Tuesday, July 2, but it doesn’t seem like players are excited about the new season. While the drop in EA’s stock price can’t directly be credited to the release of Apex season two, the lack of enthusiasm and other factors surrounding the game surely haven’t helped improve investor’s confidence. EA is already facing backlash for one of its big titles this year, Jedi Fallen Order, which comes out in November.
The latest season of Apex introduced a new character, Wattson, who hasn’t noticeably increased excitement or interest in the game. Wattson has a defensive moveset and some streamers have already said she’s useless.
While season two did bring a host of changes that shook up the metagame, the season two Battle Pass is actually harder to level up in when compared to season one’s—and the first one was already a slog.
Apex Twitch streamers combined to bring in less than 50,000 viewers in total on July 3, too, and most of those came from popular streamer Michael “shroud” Grzesiek. In comparison, the Apex category on Twitch had over 100,000 viewers on one day in March, according to CNBC.
EA wasn’t the only company to see a decline in stock price yesterday, however. Activision shares also fell by 3.4 percent, while Take-Two’s stock dropped 1.9 percent. But Nintendo saw a rise after announcing that 10 million Switch owners are signed up for Nintendo Switch Online. Nine million Switch owners were signed up for the service in April.
