Apex Legends is the current new hotness. This free-to-play, team-based battle royale (developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA, no less) amassed a player base of over twenty-five million players in one week, and given our review, it’s easy to see why. Now, a game studio that isn’t Respawn Entertainment is possibly benefiting from Apex Legends’ fame, all because it made a game with a similar name.
According to a reddit post by Andreas Juliusson, marketing and communications manager of Fast Travel Games, Apex Legends’ mere existence has increased traffic to the Steam store page of the studio’s one and only game, Apex Construct, by a whopping 4000%. In what can only be described as one of the weirder cases of the Mandela Effect in action, the studio “sold more units of Apex Construct in China the last seven days than during ALL of 2018,” likely due to gamers who were searching for Apex Legends on Steam.
To recap, Apex Legends is a free battle royale game that is available on PC through EA Origin, whereas Apex Construct is VR game on Steam (and the PlayStation 4) that costs $29.99. One is a team-based online game that takes place in the Titanfall universe, the other is a single-player game where players shoot robots with a cyber bow. As Juliusson eloquently put it, “Somewhere, there are massive misunderstandings going on.”
While this sudden burst in traffic and sales might seem like quite the windfall, Juliusson is afraid of fallout that is already starting. As he points out, negative reviews have started pouring in, apparently “from Chinese buyers who feel they have been scammed.” More importantly, Juliusson is confident most if not all of these sales will be refunded.
Regardless of whether or not Juliusson’s refund predictions come to pass, Apex Legends may have accidentally given Apex Construct a metric ton of exposure. Only time will tell if Fast Travel Games will benefit from this publicity in the long run.
