While Respawn’s surprise release of Apex Legends might have given Epic’s Fortnite a run for its money, at least initially, a new report suggests interest in Apex Legends is already waning, while the viewing numbers of Epic’s Fortnite remain stable.
The number of fans watching streams of Apex Legends on Twitch may have initially been double those of Fortnite, but a new report (thanks, VGR) by StreamElements now suggests that while Apex did peak at around 40 million hours watched in a single week, by mid-March those total viewing hours had already dropped to a little more than 10 million.
Fortnite, on the other hand, experienced a temporary blip in view count when Apex Legends launched, but it quickly bounced back to above 20m and has remained stable ever since.
Naturally, Twitch views don’t automatically equate to player numbers or even revenue, but the rapid decline in Apex Legends’ view count is interesting nonetheless—especially as it was originally thought Apex could be a real contender to Fortnite’s battle royale crown.
In other Apex Legends news, Respawn banged the swift hammer of justice once again, hardware ID-banning (HWID) a number of Apex Legends players on PC, including one prolific cheater who was banned again and again as he attempted to bypass the bans live on Twitch. It follows the banning of over 355,000 cheaters on PC last month, during which Respawn confirmed it was scaling up the anti-cheat team, and also planning to add a report feature that will go directly to Easy-Anti-Cheat.
“The service works but the fight against cheaters is an ongoing war that we’ll need to continue to adapt to and be very vigilant about fighting”, Respawn said at the time. “We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players.”