Along with delaying Star Wars Jedi: Survivorby six weeks, Electronic Arts says it’s shutting down Apex Legends Mobile less than a year after releasing the game on iOS and Android. The company is also abandoning Battlefield Mobile and closing Industrial Toys, the studio behind that game.
“At Respawn, we aim to provide players with games that are consistently outstanding,” Respawn Entertainment said in a statement. “Following a strong start, the content pipeline for Apex Legends Mobile has begun to fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence. It is for this reason, after months of working with our development partner, that we have made the mutual decision to sunset our mobile game.” Tencent and Lightspeed had been working on the mobile version.
EA has already delisted Apex Mobile (which Apple named the iPhone game of the year for 2022) from app stores and halted all in-app purchases with real money. The game will still be playable for a few more months until the servers are switched off on May 1st at 7PM ET. EA says it won’t refund real money purchases but suggests that users can request refunds from the App Store or Play Store.
As for Battlefield Mobile, that game hadn’t been fully rolled out. EA started testing it in select markets in the fall of 2021. EA says it’s still focused on helping the Battlefield series reach its potential (it has ambitious plans for the franchise) and supporting Battlefield 2042, but a mobile version is no longer on the cards for the time being.
Meanwhile, around the same time EA announced the end of Apex Legends Mobile, it emerged that the Epic Games-published Rumbleverse, a pro wrestling-themed battle royale, will shut down at the end of this month. While big players like Fortnite, PUBG: Battlegrounds, the PC and console version of Apex Legends and Fall Guys seem to be doing just fine for now, these closures suggest the battle royale bubble is starting to burst.