Apex Legends

Apex Legends is currently available on Steam.
 🛒 Get it on Steam for free (via Browser | Steam client*)
Supported OS: Windows (See system requirements)
Also available from the following other storefronts or websites:
Origin/EA App • Nintendo Store

Notice: Steam Deck and Linux is supported using Proton. Easy Anti-Cheat (which is used by this game), while supported by Epic Games, it may have occasional issues with Linux/Steam Deck.

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Apex Legends is the award-winning, free-to-play Hero Shooter from Respawn Entertainment. Master an ever-growing roster of legendary characters with powerful abilities, and experience strategic squad play and innovative gameplay in the next evolution of Hero Shooter and Battle Royale. The game is a spinoff title of Titanfall series, and was set in the Titanfall universe.

Like Titanfall and Titanfall 2, Apex Legends also used the heavily modified version of the Source engine under the Titanfall branch, but the engine has been improved to allow higher draw distances and a larger game map, this apparently pushed the engine to its limit and as a result, the game has compromises on dynamic display resolution, and this led to the console ports and low end PCs suffering from lower image quality & framerate. Apex Legends also removed several files which are common in other Source games, such as vphysics.dll, gameinfo.txt and other files.

The game also drops support for HBAO+ ambient occlusion and MSAA, the latter was common on most Source engine games (and still available in Counter-Strike 2, which is a Source 2 game), replacing it with SSAO and TAA respectively. This is also the only Source engine game to support DirectX 12 by using -anticheat_settings=SettingsDX12.json launch option. Furthermore, since around Aug 2023, Respawn removed all remaining VPK files and moved it to the proprietary RPAK format^[confirm][1].

There was also a mobile port of this game, which is no longer available and its servers have been shut down. These versions used Unreal Engine 4 instead of the Source engine.

Features

Renderer

Direct3D 12 (DX12) renderer

Currently the only Source engine game to support DX12. Can be enabled using "-anticheat_settings=SettingsDX12.json" command line.

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)

Replaces HBAO+ ambient occlusion.

Networking

Cross-play support^[2]

Apex Legends can connect to other platforms/consoles.

Cross play is supported on the following platforms: PC (EA App & Steam), PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch.

Easy Anti-Cheat

Instead of using VAC like most Multiplayer GoldSrc, Source & Source 2 games, and few other titles using other engines, Respawn Entertainment opted to use Easy Anti-Cheat, made by Epic Games and the same Anti-Cheat used in Fortnite, most Unreal Engine games and many others. This is more advanced than VAC, as Easy Anti-Cheat runs on kernel.

External links

• Apex Legends on EA
• Game updates on EA
• Forums on EA
• Apex Legends on Wikipedia
• Apex Legends on PCGamingWiki
• Apex Legends on Liquipedia
• Apex Legends on YouTube
• Apex Legends Global Series on YouTube

References

References

1. @KralRindo (January 1, 2010) on  X (Twitter): We are at the end game now I wanna give sight about why it took much longer to datamine, and what exactly gonna end datamining With last patch, Respawn removed couple files that had scripts and map data (aka VPK's) and moved all data to Rpak's Now it's easy to edit, change and export a vpk file means we can do little tweaks that helps us datamining But these assets being in rpaks means we can no longer edit them, legion+ currently can export that data (still WIP) but when new mid season update comes, it won't be able to Not being able to get the scripts means we will have really hard time getting data and making in game showcases, or much longer process Also the fact Respawn releases event at launch, and a lot more careful with dfs assets already killed datamining, there isn't much to find anymore This might be end of an era.. 2. Apex Legends cross-play: how to play with friends.