Catch ex-Halo pros now in Apex playing in a $50,000 Halo 2 tourney this afternoon
A quick briefing from The Final Circle, a newsletter for the Apex community
How about putting on some competitive gaming this afternoon?
What to watch:
A $50,000 Twitch Rivals Halo 2 tournament beginning at 2 PM EST today. The competition will feature Apex competitive development lead Eric Hewitt, who you might also know as Ghost, the ALGS caster Tom “Tsquared” Taylor, and TSM’s Snip3down. All three were some of the greatest pro Halo players of all time, and this should be a fun nostalgia trip.
GLL Arenas Summer kicks off tomorrow, featuring a $20,000 prize pool. Full schedule is at the link. If you haven’t been watching competitive Arenas, this would be a good time to start: while fans and players seem divided on the potential of the mode, let’s not forget that EA execs specifically brought up Arenas and its strength as a esport on their corporate earnings call a few weeks back. To me, that communicates a willingness to further expand the competitive scene.
Pros get antsy waiting for their ALGS checks to arrive
Players have not yet been paid their winnings from June’s ALGS Championship. While these wait times are unfortunately typical in esports, players are beginning to wonder what the hold-up is. On August 15th Shahin Kanafchian, who handles competitive gaming partnerships for the ALGS, suggested in a tweet that the payments should have already been deposited into player’s accounts: “I believe this should have been handled already. To my knowledge most ALGS payments should have been paid out fairly quickly if all the necessary info was submitted.” When several pros responded that they weren’t aware of any players who’d been paid their winnings yet, Kanafchian told them he’d check up on it this week. More on this situation as we hear new info.
Is it only me whos still didnt get any info about payments from ALGS Championship? But 2 months already passed or this is about a norma rn? Or did i miss something? @PlayApex
Timmy’s solo push from bronze to predator rank in one, more than 54 hour stream (more than two days without sleep if anyone’s counting) brought huge numbers to his channel and tons of admirers, while others questioned the perverse incentives of being rewarded for such unhealthy behavior. Streaming has always been a physically punishing profession, and marathon streams are only a small component of the many ways that streamers tax their body and mind to entertain us.
Peach, a cracked Apex player who is also a Black woman, posted a W on Twitter about becoming the first Black female predator this season. While this type of post highlighting an achievement is super common for players, it seemed to rile several commenters at the time (“Ok but why add race to it?”) while Aqualix’s Gnaske appeared to openly mock the post (screenshot is below). He’s since posted an explanation insisting he was not aware of Peach’s original post.
TSM’s ImperialHal, who just hit 1 million followers on Twitch, let everyone know how he feels about performance-enhancing drugs. With the return of LAN events, Apex may see stricter regulation around the use of stimulants like Adderall. It’s all but impossible to know how widespread Adderall abuse has been in the ALGS over the last year, but given the drug’s prevalance among 18-25 year-olds, it is probably more common than you’d think.
Unless you’re prescribed , people that take adderall to be ahead of others in competitive gaming should be very ashamed of themselves.
Lastly, T1 released their Apex roster, fueling speculation about the org’s reasons for letting go of a good squad during a boom time for the game:
