Respawn Entertainment

Respawn Entertainment was founded by former employees of Infinity Ward, a company under Activision known for making games in the Call of Duty franchise. The newly-formed Respawn signed on with EA to develop a brand new sci-fi game, which would eventually be revealed to be Titanfall.

Featuring fast-paced free-running action and lumbering mechanical robots as allies, Titanfall was praised as a unique twist to first-person shooters, particularly in the multiplayer space. Respawn’s commitment to gameplay performance over graphics also saw them use Valve’s proprietary Source engine for the game, which generated some buzz at the time. However, the game never quite caught on in popularity, at least not as much as EA would have liked.

The release of Titanfall 2 sought to fix some of Titanfall’s issues, most notably the first game’s lack of a story campaign. However, despite its excellent yet short campaign, the sequel ended up also underperforming against EA’s expectations, despite all the positive critical reception.

Fast forward to the rise of the battle royale genre. Games like PUBG and Fortnite are all the rage, but the genre is still at its infancy and without too many competitors. Thus, Respawn’s Apex Legends in 2019 launched at the perfect time, capitalizing on a booming market with a unique take on the battle royale format. Marrying some of Titanfall’s athletic agility with the abilities and ultimates of hero games like Dota or Overwatch, the game became an overnight instant hit.

Out of the battle royale games, user-based content creation for Apex Legends is among the highest. It boasts over 100 million players in-game across its lifetime, with over 100,000 concurrent players at any time on Steam. To say that Apex Legends alone has made Respawn and EA well-off is an understatement.

And yes, the game still runs on the Source engine.

Know of any other video game companies that were close to going dark or obscure before it turned things around with a Hail Mary of a game? Tell us!