Apex Legends Mobile Dominates App Gaming Charts Worldwide

EA is having a pretty swell week. As of its release on 17th May, Apex Legends Mobile has become the most downloaded game on the App Store in 60 countries including the US, the UK, Japan, Germany and India. And we bet that Diablo Immortal developers, Blizzard, are rubbing their hands together at the sight.

It’s not as if developers and publishers needed any more evidence that a switch to app gaming is worth their time. But the information first spotted by Sensor Tower and reported by PocketGamer is evidence enough that simply porting a title to the mobile platform is enough to rally fans in their droves for that sweet, sweet portability.

But, to be fair, to brand Apex Legends Mobile a simple mobile port doesn’t do it justice. EA have shown savvy in bringing a few exclusive features to the mobile version of the game, including a mobile-only legend in the form of Fade, as well as a mobile-exclusive Team Deathmatch mode that can’t be played on traditional platforms.

Not only that, but a solid pre-registration campaign saw more than 15 million people register ahead of the worldwide launch. This was thanks in no small part to the snazzy cosmetics on offer as pre-registrations reached certain milestones, including a Molten Earth Epic Skin and the Sunfire Initiate Epic Skin, to name a couple. It’s safe to say that skins mean a lot to Apex Legend players.

Which is why, despite its astronomical popularity, Apex Legends Mobile has already begun to draw ire for its pricey cosmetics. In-app purchases (A.K.A. microtransactions) are par for the course with mobile games at this point. Which wasn’t always the case. But as years have gone on, the willingness of the app gaming community to part with a couple of dollars here or there has culminated in a pricing strategy that has its hooks in just about every developer.

And it would seem that EA are attempting to push that boundary a little further. Their ‘overpriced’ cosmetics have been lambasted as a cynical attempt to see just how liberal their player base is with their wallets. As of right now, EA are charging $14 for a cosmetics crate which allows ten ‘spins’, meaning that nabbing your favorite skin isn’t even a guarantee.

Whether or not the campaign to boycott these microtransactions will sway the team behind the most downloaded game on the App Store remains to be seen. But if it doesn’t, it may well set a worrying precedent for app games to come.