Apex Legends Community now has various rumors circulating on that the long-gone Arenas game mode will be making a return in Apex Legends Season 24. However, we have no confirmation from Respawn or EA that it is something that’s planned for Season Twenty-Four which will be the Anniversary Season for Apex Legends releasing in early 2025 as the game turns 6 Years Old, but we have some official confirmations and details that Respawn Devs themselves shared on Arenas mode. Let’s dive into the details and everything we know about Arenas
Table of Contents
What is Apex Legends Arenas?
Arenas was a game mode added in Season 9 Legacy alongside New Legend: Valkyrie & New Weapon: Bocek Bow, With Arenas Apex Legends tried the gameplay approach of round-based games like Valorant & Counter-Strike and trying to get the attention of players from those games to try out Arenas
Match Progression: Unlike the 60-player Battle-Royale mode, Arenas was limited to a 3 vs 3 player battle a round-based mode that allowed players to observe and understand their enemies over the course of Nine rounds, and the last team standing would take the Victory, Arenas required you to be at least 2 round of wins ahead of the enemy team for the match to end or else the game will continue to proceed forward and extending the match time. The easiest way to secure the win in Arenas was to win 3 rounds without letting the opponent win for example (3 – 0) or (3-1) would instantly grant you the victory. but if players keep extending the match time. After Round Nine the game will ascend into a “sudden death” mode, during this period any team that wins this round will take the Victory regardless of the points lead from previous rounds
Weapons/Loadouts: Weapons & Abilities were locked for all players and could only be purchased with materials obtained through EVO harvesters or materials earned during the rounds by performing certain actions such as kills and wins, and weapons rarity can be upgraded with materials as you earn more points during rounds, and each round will reset the weapons, and abilities would only have limited charges, for example, you could only use bloodhound’s ultimate once during each round. unlike weapons, the un-used abilities carry over to the next round saving players some materials that can be used to upgrade their arsenal
Why was Arenas Removed?
Arenas was replaced in favor of the Mixtape playlist with the release of Season 16: Revelry (Mixtape is a separate playlist featuring multiple modes like TDM, Control, and Gun Run)
Apex Legends Design Director ‘Evan Nikolich’ explained that “Arenas is not hitting our goal of being a good place for practice. We have BR as this high-stakes competitive place and Arenas overlaps a bit too much, we want to bring something to players that allows a little more relaxed play”
At that time it seemed like this was the end of Arenas and that it would never return after that point, however, Respawn had some other plans for fixing this game mode
Statement from Apex Legends Dev’s
In a Season 20 Gameinformer exclusive interview Apex Legends Devs Ferreria and Nikolich discussed the potential comeback of the 3v3 mode “Arena has been Backburnered, but it’s on out quiver to use it again at some point” Evan Nikolich continued “It’ll potentially come back in the next 12-24 months. It’s definitely something on our roadmap”
Respawn gave us a rough estimate on when we should expect Arena but this is in no way a ‘confirmed’ release date as with games there are usually unexpected technical challenges that occur which can delay the time of things but Respawn has yet not given any updated information regarding this matter
Nikolich states “I don’t think we fully understood what we were doing in terms of bifurcating our audience” and later continued with “We have to build something more unified and bring players together to play the entirety of the game, Not just like, I’m an Arena’s Main or Im a Battle-Royale Main”
In other words, Respawn wants Arenas to be support to the backbone of Apex Legends which is Battle-Royale, and they have learned that tapping into different niches will make a divide between the players which is unhealthy for the game, Respawn will try and find a way to do things differently when they decide to implement it back again
Recently, Apex Legends Youtube Creator The Gaming Merchant revealed on their live stream that participants have discussed this subject with Apex Legends Developers about Arenas whenever they got invited to playtest Apex Seasons, they mention “Every time I’ve had a chance to speak to the Devs, and anyone’s ever asked about Arenas, Dev’s say: Maybe in the future, but it’s not something, not right now, They do plan to do It, but not yet.”
Conclusion
The rumors and leakers might seem to have confused this statement as in Arenas “confirmed” release date, whether the leaks are true or not remains to be seen as Season 24 is just months away from being released, where Respawn will officially confirm the legitimacy of these reports in a blog post of their official @PlayApex X (formerly Twitter) page and to catch up with latest Apex Legends Season 23, you can read that here
