It was recently revealed that Rumbleverse and Apex Legends Mobile will be canceled, which has not sat well with fans.
Electronic Arts' battle royale offering, released on May 17 last year, has done well so far, bringing the exciting FPS gameplay of the PC and console originals to mobiles. It even won Apple's Game of the Year for 2022 and the corresponding award from Google Play. However, the publisher's recent update, which came as part of its Q3 FY203 earnings results, means that Apex Legends Mobile will shut down in less than 90 days, on May 1.
EA added that once the game is gone, any items or extras players purchased will also disappear. The statement has irked many fans, as they will not get refunds for money spent on Apex Legends Mobile, which has already locked the buying mechanism in-game. The title will also be pulled from app stores soon.
Meanwhile, Epic Games' free-to-play brawler was released on August 11, 2022, and has been pretty successful. However, the game's official social media handles disclosed a few days back that Rumbleverse would see its end come February 28, 2023, at 10 AM CST.
Epic also announced that anyone who spent real money on the game, developed by Iron Galaxy, can apply for a refund. For clarification, they are eligible for a refund if they bought a premium edition of Rumbleverse or spent cash to obtain in-game items.
Deeper dive into two games' performances
When it comes to the Twitch stats of these two games, the trajectory is more or less similar. After the initial euphoria following their releases, things started taking a downward trend in almost all the metrics, including hours watched and peak viewers.
For Rumbleverse, the peak in terms of HW came in August 2022, the month of its release, at 3,856,753. The average viewership for the game topped 7,317 in the same month.
The title's highest PV was seen in November 2022 at 88,007, which showed that the updates the game was receiving were doing wonders at that point. However, as mentioned, the trend here was that most metrics started falling after the first few months of the game's release.
When it comes to Apex Legends Mobile, the highest HW numbers came during its second full month post-release, at 2,74,691 in July 2022. The game's average viewers also peaked this month, while the PV numbers were the highest in Aug 2022 (33,717).
It was mostly a downward trend in terms of all the numbers thereafter, suggesting that the initial honeymoon period had worn off and the competition from other battle royale titles took away a chunk of the audience.
Rumbleverse also had more peak channels on Twitch broadcasting its gameplay compared to Apex Legends Mobile (92 to 75). Interestingly, for the former, there was a big discrepancy between the top channel, xTheSolutionTV, and the rest of the pack in the percentage of total game HW category (37,548 HW and 13,29% of the total game HW) for January 2023. This suggests that this channel was perhaps producing some great content compared to the rest of the field, but it ultimately proved futile for the game's future.
The corresponding figures for Apex Legends Mobile were much more evenly spread among the various channels, meaning there were more options for viewers to get good content related to the game on the platform.
Publisher's official reasons for stopping these games
In its official statement, EA stated that 'following a strong start, the content pipeline for Apex Legends Mobile has begun to fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.' The publisher added in its FAQ that 'this decision for Apex Legends Mobile is platform-specific, and is independent of the game on PC and Consoles. As a franchise, Apex Legends is strong, and we're looking forward to sharing exciting updates in the future.'
Epic and developer Iron Galaxy revealed that Season Two would be the last for Rumbleverse on its official website. The latter also added a heartfelt post on its site, stating:
"It is our sincerest hope that this news does not mark the end of Rumbleverse. You may not yet have seen the Rumble in its final form. If we can welcome people back onto the deck of the battle barge again, we hope you'll be there, laced up and ready to take your rightful place in the cannon. Iron Galaxy will keep making games. It's our passion and our purpose. Our people are filled with skills and inspiration to keep the world playing. Thank you for playing. This is not the last time you'll hear from us. This is not the last time we'll invite you to play."
It seems that both games, after the initial high, started performing below the expected standards set by the developers and publishers, leading to their sunsets.
Ultimately, it can be surmised that since the watch numbers and every related metric for both games on crucial platforms like Twitch were not particularly on the impressive side, and perhaps with differences in ideas for future plans between the developers and publishers, the decision to shut down the servers of Apex Legends Mobile and Rumbleverse were made.