EA stops development on Apex Legends and Battlefield mobile titles

Company announces a strategic shift

Marco Wutz | Feb 1, 2023

EA stops development on Apex Legends and Battlefield mobile titles /

EA has announced a double whammy for fans of two of its biggest franchises: Development on Apex Legends Mobile as well as Battlefield Mobile has halted. Calling this a “strategic decision”, EA states that the inability to “meet the expectations of our players” was a deciding factor in both cases.

“Despite Apex Mobile’s strong start, the ongoing experience was not going to meet the expectations of our players. After months of working with our development partner, we have made the mutual decision to sunset the mobile game”, EA had to say regarding Apex Legends Mobile.

Respawn Entertainment provided its own perspective on the incoming shutdown, stating: “Following a strong start, the content pipeline for Apex Legends Mobile has begun to fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.” The studio appears to be open for further venture on the mobile platform, however: “Respawn and the Apex Legends team remain excited about mobile as a platform and look forward to new opportunities to serve players there in the future.”

Apex Legends Mobile has entered a 90-day sunset period and will be permanently shut down on May 1, 2023, at 4pm PDT / 7pm EDT, which is May 2, 2023, at 12am BST / 1am CEST.

As for Battlefield Mobile, EA explains that “[a]s the industry has evolved and our strategy to create a deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem has taken shape, we decided to pivot from the current direction to best deliver on our vision for the franchise and to meet the expectations of our players.”

The publisher states that it remains “highly committed” to the Battlefield series, working on more updates for Battlefield 2042 and entering “pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.”

Battlefield 2042 recently added a form of the traditional class system back into the game after the spectacular failure of the new specialist system, which was supposed to give players more freedom on how to equip themselves. In practice, however, it led to everyone using pretty much the same weapons and gadgets to not be at a disadvantage.

Published Feb 1, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg