Apex Legends Season 25’s new innovations are overshadowed by layoffs

Last week I was invited to sit down for a preview of Apex Legends Season 25, which brings a brand new Legend, balance changes, and sweeping adjustments to the meta — but today, my news feed is filled something significantly less hopeful: layoffs at Apex Legends developer Respawn, and a cancelled Titanfall game.

That’s not going to stop Season 25 from marching on, with the release of brand-new character Sparrow, who will be the first playable Legend to be added to the game in a year. Sparrow specialises as an archer – which means the Bocek is back being floor loot – and comes with the adorable feline pet Artemis as a companion. An Italian bounty hunter, Sparrow has been recruited by Blisk to participate in the Apex Games. Sparrow is young, but that’s why Season 25 is titled Prodigy.

Sparrow was announced, and less than 24 hours later, narrative designer Heather Woodward – who wrote Sparrow – was among 100 employees laid off at Respawn. Respawn half-heartedly confirmed work on a new Star Wars Jedi game in the announcement, but writer and director of the first two games – Stig Asmussen – left Respawn in 2023, and announced new studio Giant Skull in 2024. It doesn’t instill fans with much confidence in Respawn’s upcoming Star Wars: Zero Company, which is being co-developed with Bit Reactor.

With the recent news in the forefront of your mind, it’s tough not to analyze Apex Legends to try to figure out what went wrong. Apex Legends had made over $2 billion by May 2022, and its peak Steam player count came almost a year later, in February 2023, according to SteamCharts. Constant growth isn’t sustainable though, and word of a “large systemic change” came in after the game missed monetization targets.

I must confess, I am a lapsed Apex Legends player, and I haven’t earnestly given the game time since 2021. But make no mistake, I racked up well over 1,000 hours of play in those early years. Even though it hasn’t been that long in the grand scheme, I regularly get nostalgic about those early days. I might not be up-to-date on the mechanics of the lore and the meta adjustments, but I used to be, and I still have a fondness for Apex that I don’t have for any other live service. I don’t want Apex Legends to dwindle into obscurity before getting shut down, but it’s hard to draw another conclusion from these kinds of headlines.

Sparrow is the first new Legend added to the game in a year, and the last all-new map was introduced in 2022. Apex Legends doesn’t need a new map to be added every other season, nor does it need a cast of 50 Legends to be engaging, but they are signs that the game is running out of Steam. Apex Legends was once seen as rivalling the dominance of Fortnite Battle Royale, but whereas Fortnite – bolstered by being a partial tech demo for Epic’s Unreal Engine – has had record-breaking events and player numbers in the last year, Apex Legends is downsizing — both in terms of how much content is coming to the game, and how many people work at Respawn Entertainment.

It’s not all because of Apex Legends, of course. Respawn Entertainment doesn’t just work on one game, and EA has had to cut many more employees outside of Respawn’s teams, proving that the parent company’s overall financial results are the problem here. But hey, Season 25 is bringing the Arenas mode back, allowing players to have heated 1v1 battles at long last.

The meta of Apex Legends is shifting towards a longer range, so snipers are getting limb damage buffs again, and the Bocek bow can transform frag grenades into a stack of explosive arrows, allowing you to hang back while causing chaos. It’s ideal for the latest Legend, who’s an archer, but my personal favorite – Pathfinder – can now double the recharge time of either his Tactical or Ultimate abilities, making him much more potent in pretty much every situation. And yes, P2020s have seen a nerf, meaning you’re less likely to see final circles filled with pistols. 

Apex Legends just might be the best battle royale game, and it’s still high above tens of thousands of games on Steam every single day, sitting comfortably in the overall top ten in terms of player count. Then why is it so hard to celebrate its successes? Why do all the headlines about a game that’s slightly past its peak sound like a memorial? Recent smash-hits like Marvel Rivals – which also saw layoffs shortly after release – might be achieving roughly the same amount of Steam peak players, but that game also sees lower daily lows. Why is that set to grow, while Apex is slowly being forgotten? My guess is that the lofty expectations placed upon Apex Legends and other live services are just too big, because there are dozens of smaller live service titles thriving. 

Once upon a time I truly loved Apex Legends, more than any other shooter I’ve ever played, and I’d like nothing more than Season 25 to convince me that I can jump in and feel the same exhilaration I once did. Unfortunately, my last real point of comparison was a time of exponential growth for the game and the studio, and comparing that era to now is depressing, especially when developers can’t keep their jobs for long enough to see their work release.