Despite Apex Legends launching only two weeks ago, the new battle royale shooter has already hit some major milestones, including setting a new record for single-day viewership on Twitch and crossing the 25 million player mark. However, proof of the game's immense popularity is also appearing in some unexpected ways, including a dramatic sales spike that has recently occured for the VR action-adventure game Apex Construct.
In a recent post on Reddit, Andreas Juliusson, the community manager for Fast Travel Games, indicated that the similarity of Apex Construct's title to Apex Legends has led the company to sell "more units of Apex Construct in China the last seven days than during ALL of 2018." For clarity, it seems that a number of players have mistakenly spent $29.99 on Fast Travel's VR game when attempting to obtain a copy of the free-to-play Apex Legends.
As noted by Juliusson, many of these players are likely to seek refunds for their copies of Apex Construct, but he jokes that the company's books "look pretty good at the moment." Despite his attempt to find humor in the situation, Juliusson does suggest that the confusion has led to some fallout, with many negative reviews being left on the game's Steam page by those that feel as though they were scammed.
Of course, it would be difficult for this to have been Fast Travel's intention, as Apex Construct was released in March 2018, almost a full year before the release of Apex Legends. To that end, the Reddit post indicates that "the Steam Community team is looking into this right now" in an attempt to rectify the situation.
It is also worth noting that titles are not the only similarity shared by these two games — their logos are very much alike as well. Again, Juliusson points to the fact that Apex Construct was released first, and thus the logo is not a ploy to trick people into purchasing the game.
At the end of the day, the confusion spurred by the success of Apex Legends is unlikely to have much of lasting impact on Fast Travel or Apex Construct. However, it must certainly be an exciting moment for the self-described "small studio," and its members seem to be taking some delight in it while it lasts.
Apex Legends is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Reddit