Stuck on Black Screen After Intro

I’m having an issue where Apex Legends launches normally and plays the intro/loading animation, but immediately afterward the screen goes completely black.

There is a small orange/red rectangular loading indicator in the bottom-right corner of the screen. It stays there indefinitely and I never reach the main menu/lobby.

The game does not crash or give me an error message — it simply remains stuck on the black screen.

PC Specs

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070
• CPU: Intel Core i7-14900K
• RAM: 32 GB Corsair
• Motherboard: Z790
• Storage: 2 TB SSD

Launchers Tested

I originally had Apex installed through Steam and experienced the issue there.

I then switched to the EA App and installed/launched Apex through the EA launcher instead.

The exact same problem happens on both launchers.

What Happens

1. Launch Apex Legends.
2. Game starts normally.
3. Apex intro/loading screen appears.
4. Intro finishes.
5. Screen turns completely black.
6. Small orange/red rectangular loading indicator appears in the bottom-right.
7. Game remains stuck there indefinitely.
8. I never reach the lobby.

Troubleshooting I Have Tried

• Tried launching through Steam.
• Tried launching through the EA App instead.
• Tried using a completely different EA/Apex account.
• The second account has the exact same issue, so it does not appear to be account-specific.
• Tried forcing Apex to launch in windowed mode through launch options.
• The game ignored the windowed launch option and continued launching fullscreen.
• Tried changing/removing launch options.
• Restarted the game multiple times.
• Restarted the PC.
• Tried basic launcher/game troubleshooting.

The important part is that a second account also gets stuck at exactly the same point, and switching from Steam to the EA App did not fix it.

Additional Information

The computer itself is high-end and Apex should have no problem running on the hardware.

The problem happens after the intro rather than before the game launches. Apex successfully opens and renders the intro, but appears to hang while transitioning into the lobby/menu.

The orange/red loading indicator in the bottom-right continues displaying while the rest of the screen remains black.

I’m trying to determine whether this could be related to:

• Easy Anti-Cheat
• EA AntiCheat
• Corrupted Apex configuration files
• NVIDIA driver/settings
• DirectX
• Shader cache
• Network/server authentication
• Something Apex is loading immediately before the lobby
• A background program conflicting with Apex

Has anyone experienced this exact black screen + orange/red loading rectangle in the bottom-right after the Apex intro?

If so, what fixed it?

I’m especially looking for solutions beyond the normal “restart the PC / repair the game” suggestions because the issue persists across different launchers and accounts.