Adam Kos It was last May that the long-awaited hit from adult platforms called Apex Legends, here with the nickname Mobile, arrived on mobile platforms. It didn't take long for it to gain a huge fan base, being the most downloaded game across the app stores. That's why it's rather surprising that it's ending.
Although Apex Legends Mobile falls under Electronic Arts, the title would be developed by Respawn Entertainment. Now EA has announced that in 90 days, on May 1st, the game will be closed. But how is that possible? Both in the case of the Apple App Store and Google Play, it was the best game of the entire past year.
In the statement towards the end of the hit, it is stated that after its strong start, it is no longer able to reach the set quality bar. For players, this means they only have three months to spend all of their in-game currency (which can't even be bought anymore) on the title, or else it'll be forfeited. Well, yes, but what if the title is closed for good anyway?
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The evil of freemium models, the evil of In-App purchases and indeed of online gaming itself is beautifully demonstrated here. Everything thus depends on the will of the developer, who, if he decides to end the title for any reason, simply ends it. The player can then tear their hair out because of how much money they spent on the game and what they got for it: A promising game that didn't last even a year on the market, that everyone praised and praised, but the developer just ditched it.
Apex Legends Mobile
It is also reminiscent of the situation with the hit Fortnite, which, after all, is of the same battle royale genre. The situation is only different in that its creators tried to bypass Apple and its commissions from payments, but the players were the ones who were beaten, who won't be able to find the game in the App Store for some time. And all those In-App purchases are of no use to them either.
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Neither Harry Potter nor The Witcher succeeded
When something like this happens with games that aren't successful and just fly through the stores without much interest, or are no longer economical to maintain, it won't surprise anyone. We have seen this many times in the past, for example in the case of games like Harry Potter Wizard Unite, in which AR did not capture the magical world, as well as the one in The Witcher, which also tried to ride on the success of the Pokémon Go phenomenon, only unsuccessfully. But ending a game that holds the title of Game of the Year across platforms, even after a year of its existence, is different.
Mobile gamers have become accustomed to the principle: "download the game for free and pay for the content." To a large extent, all developers also switched to it, when free games with paid content completely crush the representation of paid games in the App Store. But this situation especially shows the all-telling raised finger to the players. Next time I'll think carefully before going through the In-App, if it's not worth installing a small game from an independent developer for its price and thus supporting him rather than such an insatiable giant as EA.
If we look at Supercell and their successful game Clash of Clans, they've been doing well for ten years, they're still working hard and they've got it going pretty well. This is an example of how to do this job.