Apex Legends has unexpectedly received a flood of new viewers. It's all down to the new season and a huge amount of game content. Streams Charts explains how Legacy influenced the game's position in the Twitch rankings, as well as why it revived Titanfall 2, the in-game predecessor to Apex Legends.
On May 4th, Apex Legends received a new story update called Legacy. The game has added a new character, Valkyrie, a new 3v3 mode, a battle pass, weapons and of course cosmetic items.
The main reason for the increased interest in Apex Legends lies in the history of Valkyrie. The thing is that Kairi Imahara is the daughter of one of the characters of Titanfall 2. And the events in Apex Legends take place 18 years after the storyline of Titanfall 2.
Titanfall 2 itself is not strongly supported by the developers, as all efforts are aimed at developing the battle royale. Therefore, the players decided to show that they care about the game and go together to play Titanfall 2 on the weekend. The developers decided to support this initiative of fans of the series and made the game free from April 30 to May 3.
How did Legacy affect Titanfall 2?
As we can see from the chart, interest in Titanfall 2 has grown since April 19, when EA Games released the Legacy teaser for Apex Legends. Compared to April 12-18, hours watched for April 19-25 increased by 261%. Also this week, peak viewers was reached — 31K.
During the free weekend, interest increased even more, and HW doubled to 271K. The game was streamed by 616 channels simultaneously at the peak, while on April 12-18 Titanfall this mark was only 98 channels.
The most popular streamer of Titanfall 2 from April 19 to May 19 was Lirik with 28K hours watched. The top also includes English-language Burkeblack, CrReaM, Korean tranth and Russian guit88man. English-speaking viewers also lead in terms of audience — 80.8%. Also during this period, 61% of Titanfall 2's unique viewers watched Apex Legends broadcasts.
The impact of Legacy on Apex Legends
The add-on was released on May 4 and compared to a week earlier, hours watched increased by 67.3%, and peak viewers was 366K viewers, which is twice more than those from April 27 to May 3.
In two weeks after the release, Legacy got 36M HW, and in total, the game was streamed by 15.5K channels. 59.8% of HW belong to English-speaking viewers, and 18.8% to Japanese-speaking viewers. Apex itself is incredibly popular in Japan, most likely the audience is captivated by the strategic component, as well as the style of the game, which vaguely resembles anime.
The most popular streamers of Apex Legends Legacy
The most popular streamer of Legacy is TSM_ImperialHal. In two weeks, Philip spent 90 hours on streams and reached 1.6M hours watched. His team also took first place at Lulu's Throwdown 2.0, an Apex Legends competition by Lululuvely in a new Arena mode. The winner of the second place in the rating by HW, ShivFPS, also took part in the tournament.
iiTzTimmy spent 97 hours in Apex Legends and devoted this time to the new mode, trying to win in Arena 100 times in a row, but managed to win only 64 times.
The rest of the top belongs to Japanese streamers Fps_Shakа and Stylishnoob4, they often play together and lead in Japan in terms of viewership. The last streamer, Yuta Seki, attracted the most viewers on the broadcast of Legacy — 58.9K at the peak.
Legacy fueled the interest of both viewers and players of Apex Legends, and also revived Titanfall 2 thanks to the game's lore and the support of the initiative from the developers. There are still viewers on the broadcasts and the indicators have not dropped to the level of those that were before the add-on. Let's see how these figures will affect the overall position of Apex Legends in the top categories of the month.
In addition to streaming, Apex Legends is actively developing its esports scene. In June, we will see the final of the Apex Legends Global Series Championship 2021, which we will tell you about in our blog on Esports Charts. Subscribe to our social networks to stay up to date with esports statistics.
