Apex Legends Season 26: Showdown launches on August 5. The first-person shooter has been live for just over six years now, and this season is adding a new permanent game mode called Wild Card–the chaotic new party mode that takes a hard left away from the structure of the regular battle royale experience players are accustomed to.

We attended a press event ahead of the season’s launch and got the chance to ask a few questions about the mode while speaking to members of the dev team. Apex Legends senior technical designers Chris Ruvolo and Kevin Wolski answered all of our questions about Wild Card.

What is Wild Card?

Wild Card is a battle royale mode that throws in mode-specific perks called wild cards, several kitted weapons, and exciting features that both streamline and speed up the experience. For example, the ring is condensed and filled with just 30 players, giving you less of the Kings Canyon map to explore, while adding in new ziprails, gravity cannons, and more. A smaller playable area with extra traversal options likely means quicker deaths, so Wild Card gives each player a self-revive kit for a second chance.

The mode also contains kitted weapons that can be upgraded as you play, alongside about 11 mythic red-tier weapons. The mythics aren’t reduced to one or two options in Wild Card–and they’re all on the floor–which gives it a true party game vibe to distance itself from the seriousness of ranked matches.

“So this is our take on a more fast-paced battle royale mode that maybe is a little bit less intimidating for newer players that maybe jump into the regular battle royale experience and [feel] a little bit overwhelmed with all the looting and the equipment [management] that they have to do. This mode really focuses on shooting, movement, and Legends,” Wolski said.

“Yeah, and just to add to that, Wild Card also came about because we were looking to address player feedback that they don’t like the unranked experience getting filled with overpowered weapons or crazy mechanics,” added Ruvolo. “So we want to keep that mode pure and very similar to ranked. So, if you want to try LTM-style stuff with these strong weapons and modifications to the core gameplay, Wild Card is going to be the place you’re going to want to go.”

More than an LTM

The introduction of a new permanent game mode comes as a bit of a surprise because Apex already offers limited-time modes (LTMs) every season, as well as a separate permanent playlist of rotating modes in its Mixtape selection. Wild Card could have been slotted into Mixtape, like other new modes. So, naturally, that raised the question of why the team chose to go this route and make Wild Card its own separate mode.

“So, Wild Card is a permanent mode from a couple of factors,” Wolski said. “A lot of the community feedback that we’ve heard as an events team through the last couple of seasons worth of LTMs was–especially when things like Three Strikes or Revivals came out–we heard the majority of feedback was ‘Fans wish that this was a permanent mode. We really just want a mode where you can respawn in battle royale and have that be permanent.’ So this is our answer to that feedback.”

Apex Legends has indeed lacked mainstay modes outside of battle royale for some time, especially during the period when Arenas was offline. There have been standout LTMs that add an extra jolt of excitement and uniqueness, like Three Strikes, but they come and go. And Mixtape does contain Team Death Match, Gun Run, and Control, but they’re constantly in rotation.

“And alongside that, this is really also a mode that’s a little bit more laid-back than the traditional battle royale,” Wolski said. “So this is more of an action-packed, focused spin on the battle royale experience. Along with revivals, there’s a lot of other very new, exciting features that we’re adding, such as auto-looting and the Evo weapons and the Evo collection that really just let players get right back into the combat quicker.”

One of the strong weapons revealed in the press event is completely new and exclusive to Wild Card. It’s a baseball bat that you can charge and swing to launch enemies in strategically dangerous directions for some easy KOs.

“With the bat, if you’re in the final ring, there have been moments where you can literally knock somebody out of the ring and have them die to the ring,” Wolski said. “Or even off the map, and have them fall to their death off the edge of Kings Canyon. You could also do it to teammates as well. We’re really excited to see what people pull off with this weapon because you could send your teammate with the bat flying up, and then, with Pathfinder, grapple to them and fling yourself past that. So we really can’t wait to see, because this is the first weapon that really is playing with a lot of physics. So it’s going to be really exciting.”

Fun over balance

Wild Card seems to be going for fun and excitement over everything with the implementation of the wild card system, which allows you to equip one new card per round, up to three total cards.

Each card is a perk that borders on being broken, providing boons like team revives after a kill, increased knock distance with the bat, a wall run, and other chaotic effects. Wild Card will start with seven available cards in Season 26, but the team aims to introduce new cards to eventually rotate existing ones in and out. According to Ruvolo, the goal is to have “dozens” of wild cards to create a pool of options.

With all these powerful cards, we had questions about how balancing would work–if it mattered at all.

“I would say we’re always striving for every mode to be competitive and fair,” Wolski said. “But Wild Card is definitely that mode where we could turn things up to 11, you know, and try new experimental things. Especially with being able to play the same Legend in the squad.”

Continuing with the theme of fun over everything, Wild Card even allows you to stack Legends. This means players on a team can choose the same Legend, rather than the usual lockout of one player per Legend. Want to pick three Bangalores and move across the map in a never-ending smoke cloud? Go right ahead.

“Putting this out there was definitely one of those features that was pretty contentious when we were developing it,” explained Wolski. “Like, is this going to be balanced? Is it not? But we’re kind of letting it shake out and see how players try this out. We’ve never really done something like this as a permanent mode. So we’re really interested also just to see how the meta, even within Wild Card, evolves. Obviously, if there’s any broken, super-exploitable things, we’re going to be looking at that. But overall, I think we’re just letting it loose and [seeing] how players play the game.”

The cards are an item that you actively choose and equip, but Wild Card is also introducing a new passive pickup known as Evo Orbs. These orbs upgrade weapons, regenerate shields, charge your character’s ultimate ability, and more. They seem incredibly useful, but Evo has never worked like this before.

“We know we wanted to change the way Evo worked in the mode in general,” Ruvolo said. “So, to start, one of the things we did is we got rid of Evo armor. Everybody just has blue shields off the drop. So your Evo is going to, instead, move into accumulating on your weapons. We’ve brought the kitted Weapons system back where you collect Evo and you can upgrade the tier of your weapons. So you start off with a white tier weapon, you level it up to blue, purple, gold, etc. So you’re not searching for attachments or anything like that. But the Evo Orb is a way to earn that XP, and it’s a reward for eliminating players. [You can also] find them in the loot pool.”

Collecting Evo Orbs is an essential part of the Wild Card experience because the orbs affect almost every single core gameplay element. They can even help keep you alive by kickstarting your health regen. Wild Card doesn’t contain health items like syringes or med kits–instead, there’s a passive healing system that starts after six seconds. Evo Orbs will start the regen immediately upon pickup.

Evo Orbs can be found after player eliminations, with ground loot, or in loot bins with other items. Sometimes, you can even hit the Evo jackpot, and you’ll receive a ton of orbs from a single bin.

Quality of life improves quality of fights

All of these new features are meant to streamline the gameplay to create a party mode that’s both fun and fast. The average match length in Wild Card is about 15 minutes because there are fewer rounds than a standard battle royale match.

The ring moves more quickly, but does less damage because you can’t heal yourself with syringes or med kits. The new ziprails and gravity cannons allow you to rotate around the map and escape the ring more efficiently. Looting has also become more efficient because items like ammo are automatically added to your inventory, while guns are still in deathboxes.

Even the upgrade animations for the weapons are more streamlined. In Control, upgrading a weapon can stop the flow of combat with an animation, but that’s no longer the case in Wild Card. Changes like these are meant to allow you to focus on the most entertaining parts of the BR experience.

Wild Card replaces Arenas, which temporarily returned in Season 25. When asked if Arenas would be back as a full-time mode, design director Evan Nikolich had this to say: “[We’re] not committing to anything at this point. We want to be able to take it offline [and] work on it. It’s still not hitting the engagement that we want to see.”

This is the same reason Respawn Entertainment gave as to why Arenas was originally removed from the game back in Season 16–low player count and numbers that indicated a lack of interest.

“We had good engagement, then it trailed off toward the end [of Season 25],” explained Nikolich. “Unless we get consistent engagement, we’re gonna keep working on it.”

We ended the interview by talking about what the team feels they’ve done to lay the groundwork for Apex Legends going into the second half of the year.

“For Wild Card specifically… We’ve really laid the foundation for future season updates,” Wolski said. “We have a full team dedicated to just working on Wild Card. They’re separate from the regular battle royale team. So this game mode is going to receive iterations every season. With [Season] 26, we’re introducing the baseball bat as the first signature weapon of the mode, along with the wild cards. And then the plan is that with each season moving forward, we’re going to be adding all sorts of new wild cards and weapons and equipment, toys–whatever we come up with–that really shake up the experience and keep it fresh. So I think even with Wild Card, we’ve kind of laid the foundation there for the future.”

Lead Legend designer Josh Mohan added that Respawn is looking to continue to be more responsive to the Apex community as it adds new content to the game.

“I feel that in the first half of 2025, the most important thing we’ve created is actually a better framework for how we interact with our audience and plan future content,” Mohan said. “We’ve gotten much faster at reacting to community feedback on the state of the game, and in acting more frequently, we’re getting better at knowing how to address pain points quickly. It’s a virtuous circle we want to continue into the future.”

Apex Legends is available for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC. All versions support cross-play and cross-progression.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com