EA is at it again and this time they've used a play on words to refer to a new Apex Legends character while also trolling the cryptocurrency community by tweeting "Invest in Crypto".
As battle royale games became increasingly popular, EA sought to find a developer that could give them their own title, ultimately giving the job to Respawn Entertainment. What followed was the release of Apex Legends on February 4, 2019, a free-to-play battle royale game that would receive high praise from both critics and players alike for its combat system. The game's popularity became apparent almost immediately as it boasted a player base of over one million just eight hours after release, helping it to reach over 50 million players by the end of its first month. During that same time period, thanks to microtransactions, EA reported that the game had generated over $92 million for the company.
Since its launch, Apex Legends has released multiple battle passes containing new characters, items, and weapons. With the game's third season right around the corner, EA decided to drum up support from fans by tweeting out about its latest character Crypto, effectively trolling the cryptocurrency community in the process.
Thanks to the popularity of social media, major companies no longer have to spend millions of dollars on advertising to garner the attention of the public. If EA's viral tweet ends up causing more players to download the game, we could see more posts like this through their social media channels in the future.
Details related to the viral tweet come from coindesk who revealed that EA's official Twitter account sent out a message that stated: "invest in Crypto." Almost instantly the tweet had over 10,000 favorites and 4,000 retweets, with current numbers being over double that at the time of this writing. Presently, the tweet has 2,600 comments, with most of them referring to the benefits and disadvantages of cryptocurrency, seeming to indicate that most have no idea about the company's play on words. Shortly after the original tweet, EA Access's official twitter account responded by saying, "Brother, why do you do this? You will disappoint father." Players will get their chance to try out Crypto in season 3 of Apex Legends which launches on October 1st.
While EA might get a bad wrap for how they have managed many of their titles as of late, it's clear from this exchange that their social media team knows what works. If the company sees an influx in income and player participation, it could lead to them employing the kind of viral campaigns we've seen with games like Borderlands 3.
It's nice to see companies engage with their fans through social media platforms and regardless of how people might feel about EA, it's hard not to enjoy marketing campaigns like this one. EA has the consumer engagement aspect down, they just need to learn to use player feedback to improve their games in the future.