According to an article by VGR, Apex Legends stream viewership is finally showing signs of instability after trumping Fortnite viewership during its first week. The article cites data report by StreamElements for the first quarter of this year, and things aren’t looking so good for Apex Legends anymore. However, it would seem that Fortnite stream views remain relatively stable, despite the initial competition from Apex.
The report shows that Apex Legends is down 75% of its peak viewership since launch. Once at an astonishing peak of 40 million hours watched per week, the game is now down to around 10 million hours watched per week. Only to add insult to injury, Apex Legends’ greatest rival in the war of fan attention, Fortnite, appears relatively stable at just over 20 million hours watched per week. To be fair, the emergence of Apex Legends back in February took a large chunk out of Fortnite‘s viewership for a short while.
When Apex first launched and inevitably took to Twitch, viewership for Fortnite dipped “below 100M hours watched for the first time since conquering Twitch, but it has already bounced back to 118M hours showing its resilience in the face of newer releases,” reads the report. While many believed Apex to be the chosen one, destined to rival Fortnite‘s stranglehold on the battle royale genre, expectations have obviously tapered, as exemplified by the dip in viewership and interest.
According to a report by financial website Seeking Alpha, the waning support of the game could have worse implications than just failing to beat out Fortnite. “With Apex making up a substantial portion of EA’s valuation, EA’s stock faces substantial declines,” reads the report. Seeking Alpha expects that because streamer support for the game was inorganic, with EA paying popular streamers to stream the game, the overvalue of Apex Legends by EA will ultimately lead to a loss for the company.