By Joe Colquhoun

Apex Legends

Sometimes your product doesn’t need advertising, in fact it needs the opposite. In a world full of big budgets and false promises it’s refreshing to see a company say “fuck it, let’s not tell anyone” and for it to actually work.

Yes it’s nerdy, it’s about a computer game, you can stop reading now if you want. But you shouldn’t

Apex Legends (I can only imagine an angsty 14 year old came up with the name) was released just over a month ago, created by the very smart people at Respawn Entertainment.There was no hype. No early access gameplay footage. Nothing.

In its first weekend, it had 2 million people playing simultaneously. As of today – thirty three days since its release, the game has had over 50 million players worldwide.

One day Apex was the top of a roof, the next it’s the game everyone is running home early to download. Where did it come from? Why is Shroud such a savage? Did EA have anything to do with it? (no btw EA still suck and I hate them).

Respawn knew that on paper the game sounded boring. In an oversaturated market of Battle Royale shooters its message was never going to be fully heard. What would the message have said anyway?

“Hi everyone, so we’ve made a game very similar to the ones you’re already playing, we’d like you to play ours because we think it’s better. Oh by the way, we’ve just been bought by the most hated company in the world so you can trust us not to fuck you over.”

It would have gone down like a fat kid on a see-saw. Instead they made one twitter post “we want the game to do the talking.”

This air of arrogance was just enough to get people playing. Once they did, they began to see it for what it is. It’s an unbelievably well polished game. Every problem experienced in similar titles have been fixed. Problems you didn’t know existed have been fixed, and goddamn is it fun to play.

So what’s the lesson? Simply that we trust our friends much more than we do a TV or our computer. We trust them even more when we’re told we get to shoot and teabag alongside them in a virtual world. Needless to say word of mouth got around fast. Badly named WhatsApp groups were pinging all day “have you played this game yet? It’s free and it’s fucking sick.”

To put things into perspective let’s compare Apex to the game parents love to talk about at dinner parties. Oh yeah, Fortnite. Haven’t heard that name in a while. “Apex Legends” grew from nothing to 25 million players in just seven days.”Fortnite” took 6 times as long to achieve the same growth.

No doubt, in a month’s time parents and teachers will catch on. Headlines like “Apex, the real reason your kids are a disappointment” or “Apex more dangerous than heroin” will be on the front page of the tabloids. Until then, we can keep enjoying the game guilt-free knowing that sometimes you don’t need all the glitz and glamour to advertise a product. Sometimes saying nothing and letting the product do the work is far more powerful.

The copy scores 77.8 in the Flesch Reading Ease test