Apex Legends dev explains why they’re removing Kings Canyon in Season 3

With the imminent launch of Apex Legends Season 3, players are looking forward to the addition of a brand new map, World’s Edge – but the fate of the classic Kings Canyon has already been decided, at least temporarily.

Kings Canyon was the first and, until Season 3, only map you could play in Apex since its launch in February, and although it’s undergone numerous changes in that time, players will still hopeful for a brand new location.

This new season finally delivers on that, taking the legends not only to a new map, but an entirely new planet, with the arena now named ‘World’s Edge’.

So, what will become of Kings Canyon? Well, at least for the start of the new season, the classic map will no longer be in rotation at all.

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Developer Drew McCoy explained the reasoning for this decision in an interview with Stevivor, likening the new map to the addition of a new legend.

“In Season 1 when Octane launched, he was the brand-new thing and you would see a lot of people select Octane as the first player on their team. Then the other two would disconnect because they also wanted to play as the new character,” Drew explained, “We think the same type of thing is going to happen with multiple maps.”

“What we don’t want is for someone to get in on October 1 and be like, ‘Oh, it put me on Kings Canyon, I’m going to back out.’ You’re going to end up with a bunch of half dead games,” Drew continued.

It doesn’t mean that Kings Canyon is gone forever though, as McCoy states, “at launch it’s going to be World’s Edge only, and then based on feedback from players, and the data we can get, we have a lot of different levers we can pull to see what we can do about reintroducing Kings Canyon.”

Season 3 of Apex Legends starts on October 1, when players will finally be able to jump into the action on World’s Edge, which features a mix of Lava and Ice locations.

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Kings Canyon may be a thing of the past for now, but players will surely grow wistful for the old map and hope that it makes a return perhaps later in the season.