Apex Legends Season 16 Sees Highest Peak Player Count On Steam Since Season 14

With the launch ofApex Legends Season 16: Revelry, Apex has broken its record for the highest number of Steam users playing the game concurrently, according toSteam’s most-played list, where Apex Legends is currently sitting in fourth place. As of today’s writing, Apex Legends’ peak player count record on Steam has expanded to 610,433, beating its previous record of roughly 510,000 players (earned during Season 14’s launch). But given the amount of new content and quality-of-life fixes Season 16 has introduced to the game, the recent increase in popularity isn’t too surprising.

Many reasons may be behind the spike in players. Despite launching over four years ago, Apex Legends has never offered team deathmatch to its players–not even as a limited-time mode. The permanent addition of the mode has players of all kinds excited to try the mode many of them have been waiting for since day one. New modes have been record-breaking in the past as well–the introduction of the now-defunct Arenas mode in Season 9 also surpassed the previous peak player count.

Respawn is also kicking the season off with a new Anniversary Collection Event that gives players access to Heirloom Shards if they unlock all 24 cosmetics. Heirloom Shards allow players to purchase any Heirloom Weapon or Prestige Skin in the Mythic Store, and are coveted by players due to their rarity. With only one set of Heirloom Shards appearing for every 500 Apex Packs a player opens, the opportunity to purchase them doesn’t come around often. The new Collection Event also includes a free reward track that will give players two Anniversary Collection Event Packs, which will unlock two of the 24 items in the collection, saving players $14 USD. It’s likely that many players are trying to grind for reward track points to get their hands on those Event Packs as quickly as possible.

The 100,000-player increase from the previous record could also be a result of Respawn’s recent efforts to help introduce new players to Apex’s massive storyline and occasionally-complicated gameplay. New customization options in the firing range along with new legend classes with special perks provide even more reasons for new players to try out the game (and for veteran players to hop back into it). But as previously mentioned, this number only counts players using Steam–console players aren’t counted, nor are PC players who don’t use Steam to access the game, so the amount of concurrent players could potentially be even higher than Steam’s data suggests.

Apex Legends is free to play on console and PC. A mobile version of the game, Apex Legends Mobile, is available to play on Android and iOS devices, but will be sunset on May 1.