Apex Legends
February 4, 2019
Nintendo Switch
March 9, 2021
Xbox Series X/S/PS5
March 29, 2022
Android
May 17, 2022
Nintendo Switch 2
August 5, 2025
R5Reloaded (unofficial)
- OS: Win 10/11 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i3-6300, AMD FX-4350 or equivalent (requires SSSE3 & POPCNT)
- RAM: 6 GB (8GB recommended)
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 640/AMD Radeon HD 7730 with 2GB RAM (Direct3D 11 capable)
- Network: Internet connection required
- Storage: 75 GB available space (~3.8GB for 1 localized language)
UnsupportedThis game is unsupported on Steam Deck due to use of an unsupported anti-cheat
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 made massive modifications to the engine and removed several files which are present in many Source games, such as vphysics.dll, vgui2.dll, gameinfo.txt and other files.
The game also drops support for HBAO+ ambient occlusion (which are technically superior to SSAO) and MSAA (removed due to issues and downsides with deferred renderer), replacing it with SSAO and post-processing TAA respectively. This is also the only Source engine game to support DirectX 12 (initially via command line, but later became the default since March 2025 update). Furthermore, since around Aug 2023, Respawn removed all remaining VPK files and moved it to the proprietary RPAK format[1].
Features
Renderer
- Direct3D 12 (DX12) renderer
- Currently the only Source engine game to support DX12. Enabled by default since March 2025 update, which also replaces Direct3D 11 (DX11).
- Native HDR support (only in
,
) - HDR rendered images are now display natively on HDR compatible displays, leading to higher color range than SDR monitors with SDR color range or brightness like many other Source games with HDR rendering (which simply only calculates lighting in higher dynamic range and adjust exposure automatically while being limited to SDR color range). This feature is exclusive to 9th gen game consoles (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S) only.
- 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.
Release and Ports
The game was released in February 4, 2019 for Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. A Nintendo Switch port was later released in March 9, 2021.[3][4]
In March 29, 2022, the game was ported to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles.[5]
Apex Legends was also ported to iOS and Android in May 17, 2022, the mobile port used Unreal Engine 4 instead of the Source engine likely due to Source being too heavy to run on most mobile devices, and Unreal Engine has better support for mobile devices. The mobile port has been discontinued, with it's servers shutdown in May 1, 2023.[6]
The Nintendo Switch 2 port was released in August 5, 2025, being the latest 9th generation console that Source engine has been ported to. The Nintendo Switch port is being discontinued in August 4, 2026.[7]
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. However, kernel-based anti-cheat are known to possibly have security issues and privacy risks, and might be incompatible with compatibility layers such as Wine/Proton and/or newer versions of Windows.
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
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