EA to shut down Apex Legends Mobile

Global video game firm Electronic Arts (EA) has announced that it will be shutting down its mobile game Apex Legends Mobile in May 2023. Apex Legends Mobile will close on May 1, 2023, 4pm PST, though EA did not specify a date for Battlefield Mobile, despite stating that it will be shutting down development. EA has also announced that the studio behind Battlefield Mobile, Industrial Toys, will also be shut down.

Apex Legends Mobile made its debut in 2022, bringing developer Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends to the smaller device. The game went on to win the Apple Game of the Year 2022 and the Google Play Game of the Year 2022.

With both Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile shutting down, studios such as Tencent and Lightspeed that were working on Apex Legends Mobile will also be affected. 

EA has also announced that, as “per the terms of the EA User Agreement”, it would not be providing any refunds for the real money purchases made by players. 

EA released the following statement regarding the matter:

“We’ve made the strategic decision to stop development on Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile. Despite Apex Mobile’s strong start, the ongoing experience was not going to meet the expectations of our players. After months of working with our development partner, we have made the mutual decision to sunset the mobile game. Our love for the Apex universe and our players remains unchanged. We look forward to exploring this universe, its characters, and its stories along with you. 

“We’ve also made the decision to stop the development of the current Battlefield mobile title. As the industry has evolved and our strategy to create a deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem has taken shape, we decided to pivot from the current direction to best deliver on our vision for the franchise and to meet the expectations of our players. We remain highly committed to unlocking Battlefield’s enormous potential. We’re hard at work at evolving Battlefield 2042, and are in pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.“

Andrew Wilson, CEO, Electronic Arts, spoke about the decision in his earnings call, stating:

“We have learned a great deal [from Apex Legends Mobile] and have plans to reimagine a connected Apex Mobile experience in the future. There is a level of immersion and complexity to Apex gameplay in particular which is very much what Apex is about – verticality of gameplay and team-based play – that didn’t translate quite as well to mobile devices as we had hoped. I think we learned a great deal from that.

“It didn’t retain the more casual user at the rate that we needed it to, and in a game that relies a lot on team play and competitive play, liquidity of the overall player base is really, really important as you think about the future experience for players over time. The biggest new launches that are seeing the most success are the ones that are deeply connected to the broader franchise where there’s not always cross-play but certainly cross-progression and the feeling that they’re part of a single unified community and a single unified game experience.

“Certainly as we had those learnings from Apex Legends and we were developing into Battlefield Mobile, we anticipated that while Battlefield had also been in development for some time and was making good progress, given the construct of that game, it also was probably going to run into some of the same challenges. And rather than continue to push against that, we wanted to come back, take a breath, reset, and really think about the broader franchise strategy and allow the leadership to build a true cross-platform immersive game experience around a reimagined Battlefield in the future.“

Respawn Entertainment also released a statement, which read:

“At Respawn, we aim to provide players with games that are consistently outstanding. Following a strong start, the content pipeline for Apex Legends Mobile has begun to fall short of that bar for quality, quantity and cadence. It is for this reason, after months of working with our development partner, that we have made the mutual decision to sunset our mobile game. Although disappointing, we are proud of the game we launched, are grateful for the support of the Apex Legends community and are confident that this is the right decision for players.“