WTF! Deantak has shown up on a victory screen in Apex Legends?
Deantak has shown up on a victory screen in Apex Legends?
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The DeanBeat: Chasing the fun in ‘Fortnite killer’ Apex Legends

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Against all odds, Respawn Entertainment‘s Apex Legends has become one of the most popular games in the world. It had a surprise launch just 25 days ago, but it surpassed 25 million users in its first week. It was late in the crowded first-person shooter battle royale genre, which boasts titles like Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and Call of Duty: Blacks Ops 4’s Blackout.

Last week, analyst Colin Sebastian of Baird Research noted that Apex Legends had surpassed 100 million hours of streaming on Twitch, beating Fortnite during the same period. Engagement has slipped slightly to No. 2, behind Fortnite, in recent days, according to social analytics firm Spiketrap. But it is still highly successful, and today, Gen.G announced it would even form an esports team for Apex Legends.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.