Apex Legends breaks 10M players, and 1M concurrents, in just 72 hours

Apex Legends continues to put up impressive numbers, from one million players shortly after it went live to 2.5 million in the first 24 hours, and now 10 million players—and one million concurrents—in just 72 hours.   

"This has been a truly incredible journey. We tested and tweaked. We argued and agreed. We got to a point where we felt some magic. We knew it would be risky to take the franchise in this direction, to go free to play, and do a surprise launch. But we fell in love with Apex Legends and wanted, needed, other people to play it too," Respawn boss Vince Zampella wrote in an update.

"We hoped you’d love it as much as us, but never in our wildest dreams could we have expected the outpouring of support and positivity we’ve seen. From all of us at Respawn, thank you for giving us and Apex Legends a chance. Thank you for joining us on this journey. This is just the beginning! We have so much more in store for you this year.

To put that number in comparison, it took Overwatch three weeks to rack up ten million players, while PUBG sold ten million copies in a little under six months. Of course those are both paid games, which puts them at something of a disadvantage when compared to the sweetly free Apex Legends. 

The obvious direct comparison would be Fortnite, which despite Apex Legends' explosive launch is still far and away the alpha beast of battle royales: It reportedly drew in more than ten million concurrent players during the recent Marshmello in-game concert, and while that number hasn't been confirmed, Epic did say that it had surpassed the 8.3 million concurrent player mark late last year. Respawn has drawn great attention at the outset, but it's still got a long way to go before it reaches those lofty heights.