Apex Legends, the hit battle royal game within college student circles, will be coming to steam once its 7th season launches on November 4th of 2020. The First Person Shooter Genre has always been popular within the college-age demographic. In fact, Apex Legends has become so popular among college-age students that Becker College is willing to offer you a scholarship for mastering the game.
The first hints of EA-Electronic Arts-a major game distributor, allowing cross-play with Steam was on October 25th where an EA mug was steaming. Account progression will be shared between your steam account and your Origin account if you’ve played the game previously. Stated by Valve’s own announcement page of this event. In addition to that, if you log in to Apex Legends anytime during the 7th season from your steam account, you will receive three different adorable pins for your weapons. They depict some of Valve’s staple games, two different portal-based pins, and one Half-Life pin.
The player base of the game will expand greatly. Many people still view Steam as one of, if not the only ‘safe’ game launchers online. So, people who aren’t willing to deal with Origin will finally be able to get their hands-on Apex and enjoy the game with their friends.
Because of this, other platforms are getting delays in their releases. Both mobile and the Nintendo Switch have given no official release date. Mobile has gone completely quiet, and the only statement for the Switch was “they can expect it next year.” Stated by Chad Grenier, game director of Apex Legends in a launch update.
The Drawbacks
Before you get too excited about this, we need to wait and see how well the game will be ported. Porting, which is the act of taking a game that has already been released on one system and adapting it for another, is a great way to breathe new life into a game that’s losing its player base.
Previously, games ported from Origin to Steam such as Mass Effect 3, have had major problems with overlay. Both Steam and Origin share the same overlay function so time will tell which one will be used. In addition, games ported from Origin onto Steam would force the launching of Origin when you opened the game. This would make Steam next to useless. Doing this would only cause unnecessary glitches and bugs with little to no reward. Both platforms tend to accuse the other of being responsible for the glitches. So it will be a mystery if they’re ever fixed once the game is ported.
To check out how the game is doing after the launch onto Steam. You can check out Steam Stats, which will show you the number of players on Steam specifically. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to this on Origin. So, I would suggest you go and test the game out yourself to see how popular it really is.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Logan Libby
Student Author - Fall 2020
