Apex Legends is a free-to-play online hero shooter video game playable on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. A mobile version of the game designed for touchscreens titled Apex Legends Mobile is playable on Android and iOS devices. Apex Legends is a cross platform game, allowing players to join a game from different platforms using a variety of devices. The game has two gameplay modes: ‘Battle Royale’ where up to twenty, three-person squads (‘Trios’) or thirty, two-person squads (‘Duos’) battle to defeat all other players in combat, and ‘Arenas’, where players form two, three-player squads to fight against each other in a team ‘deathmatch’ over a series of rounds to determine the winner. Players can form predetermined squads with one or two friends or be placed in a random squad by the game. The game also has a solo mode that allows an individual player to join a game without being part of a squad. Apex Legends is played over predetermined ‘Seasons’, typically lasting two or three months. Each season introduces new features and gameplay. In addition to the standard Battle Royale and Arenas modes, Apex Legends also offers ‘Ranked League’ versions of both games. Players who participate in ranked games earn points that determine their ranking, which is used to pair the player with players of a similar rank in subsequent games. Apex Legends is primarily a first-person point of view game but can be played in third-person perspective on some platforms. In April 2022, Apex Legends had a monthly player count of approximately 120 million players.
Official age rating
Apex Legends is a PEGI 16 rated game.
Apex Legends has a PEGI rating of 16 because it “features sustained depictions of violence towards human characters and moderate violence” and because the game offers in-game purchases using real-world money.
To access Apex Legends, players need to set up an EA Games account, providing a verifiable email address, a username and their age. Players need to be aged 13 or over to set up an EA account, although EA Games states players under 18 are required to have parental consent to play the game. EA Games does not have any rigorous age verification methods.
Find out more about age ratings in our ‘A parent and carer’s guide to age ratings of apps and games’.
How children and young people use the app
Apex Legends has become extremely popular in a crowded market of online third-person shooter games. The popularity is based on a free-to-play model that provides access to high quality graphics, fast and smooth gameplay with easy to learn controls and realistically detailed maps, a wide range of standard and time-limited availability game modes and the opportunity to play casually or for competitive ranking points. Players enjoy the options of playing alone, with friends or by being matched with random strangers. The accessibility and popularity of Apex Legends is increased due to its availability on all major gaming platforms and mobile devices and the cross-platform playability that enables players to play together across PCs and gaming consoles and across Android and iOS mobile devices. Like most popular games of its type, Apex Legends has a secondary interest for players who watch recorded or live-streamed games, typically via YouTube or Twitch respectively.
Key features and terminology
Potential risks
Content
Apex Legends is a first-person shooter game that features violence and blood. The default setting for Apex Legends is a first-person view, which means the game is played from the character’s perspective. This tends to create a more realistic and immersive experience, including of the violence and blood. In-game ‘kills’ produce graphic animated blood splatter, which might appear at distance or immediately adjacent to the player’s point of view. Incapacitated enemy characters can be ‘killed’ by often brutal ‘finisher moves’, animated executions that take place at very close proximity to the player character’s point of view or seen from the victim’s perspective.
In addition to the risk of harm from the gameplay itself, players use self-generated profile names that might contain offensive, derogatory or discriminatory language.
Connecting with others
Apex Legends is a cooperative multiplayer game that features voice and text chat between players. The multiplayer nature of Apex Legends means that users play against and communicate with players of different ages from across the world. Voice and text chat are used widely within the game but can be muted in game settings. Apex Legends is not rated for profanity within the game but the interactive nature of the game means that players could be exposed to offensive language through the chat function. The multiplayer nature of Apex Legends means that players will encounter people of all ages and nationalities during gameplay when joining random squads rather than forming a squad with friends. Joining a random squad might expose a player to adult-orientated language or even to verbal abuse from other players.
Apex Legends also has a non-verbal in-game communication system known as the ‘Ping system’, which is a marker system used by players to generate on-screen messages for squad members that can’t be seen by enemy teams. This system means that users can play cooperatively by communicating without using voice or text chat. As well as extending the accessibility of the game to players with hearing or communication difficulties, the ‘Ping system’ enables players to participate as fully as possible in the game without the risks associated with in-game chat.
Apex Legends has a ‘Whisper’ function that allows a user to communicate directly with another player, including someone who is playing a different Apex Legends game at that time. A useful purpose of ‘Whisper’ chat is to ask a friend if they want to join a new game or to arrange a time to play together without interrupting the game that they are playing at the time. However, the private nature of this chat provides an opportunity for verbal abuse that can’t be heard and challenged by other players or for other inappropriate communication, such as inviting a player to meet outside the game, either virtually on a different online platform or in the real world.
Apex Legends players have the option of generating a username when creating their game profile but the name used to create the account will be used by default, which might be the user’s real name. This is a particular risk if an Apex Legends Mobile game account has been generated by linking to an existing Google, Apple, Facebook or EA account. The game’s privacy settings should be checked to ensure that the user’s real name is not visible to all other players. Details on how to do this can be found in the ‘Managing privacy’ section of this guide.
User behaviour
Apex Legends has rules designed to make the game “fair and fun for everyone” and that includes warnings against “hateful conduct and other offensive behaviour”. Repeated breaches of the rules, if reported, can be sanctioned by time-outs or account closures for repeated infractions. The primary risk of harm to users is that the in-game voice and text chat functions can be used to verbally abuse players with racist, sexist, hom*ophobic or other discriminatory language. The various chat functions available within the game also create a risk of players communicating for reasons unconnected to the game, such as to encourage a player to meet elsewhere online.
Design, data and costs
Apex Legends is an online game and requires continuous internet connection to play. Apex Legends is free to download and play on all platforms but features microtransactions in the form of in-game purchases. Apex Legends has an in-game currency called ‘Apex Coins’ that are bought with real-world money and then traded in-game to purchase Apex Packs (random ‘loot boxes’ containing cosmetic items to enhance gameplay), gameplay items such as weapons from the rotating in-game shop or new playable character Legends. EA Games have made changes to global prices for the real-money transactions to purchase Apex coins, meaning it is now more expensive for UK players to purchase Apex coins. Make sure your child understands that real money is used to purchase Apex coins. In-game payments unlock only aesthetic improvements to characters and weapons and provide access to all the playable characters in the game more quickly than can be achieved through gameplay. Apex Packs, cosmetic enhancements and new characters can be earned by playing the game without incurring any additional cost and players do not achieve any gameplay advantage by spending money within the game. However, players may be impatient to access the additional content, particularly if playing with friends, which can encourage in-game purchases. Accounts to play Apex Legends Mobile, played on Android and iOS devices, can be created instantaneously by linking to an existing Google, Apple, Facebook account or an account with EA, the game publisher. This function enables very fast access to the game without the need to complete a lengthy registration process but also provides the game profile with the account details of the linked account. The ease of creating an account and joining a game and the addictive gameplay style mean that it is easy for a player to become immersed in Apex Legends if external time limits are not imposed. Typical Apex Legends games last for fifteen to twenty minutes, so the game provides natural break points between games.
Tips for keeping your child safe
Additional tips
Parental controls on PCs, consoles and mobile devices can be applied to limit access to games with older PEGI age ratings. These device settings might also provide options for limiting the player’s interactions with other online gamers, although this might apply to all games rather than a specific title.
As well as playing Apex Legends, some players also engage in discussion forums, create and watch YouTube videos of gameplay or players talking about the game and follow streamed gameplay live on Twitch. Even if a child is not playing Apex Legends, they could be accessing in-game content vicariously through videos or live-streams generated by players. All of these options have potential to expose children to adult-orientated language and abusive content as well as the violence inherent in the game. All these activities are outside the game itself and require additional safety measures to protect children.
EA Games has a dedicated page on its website for parental tools, which gives information on staying safe on their platforms.
