Catch the $50,000 Twitch Rivals today—if you're still craving Apex after three weeks of ALGS action
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter tracking the health and well-being of Snip3down's dog
Winter Circuit #4 is over, bringing the current ALGS season almost to a close. There’s only the Last Chance Qualifier and then the Playoffs. Beyond that looms the ALGS Championship, and its date, location, and specific format are still unknown—all we know for sure is that it will be the first truly global Apex tournament since 2019’s near-legendary Apex Preseason Invitational in Krakow, Poland.
The lack of a competitive Apex roadmap after the conclusion of the Winter Circuit is a bit of a worrying cliff; I’m sure pros and orgs feel the same way. But a great LAN would go a long way toward revitalizing this scene, as well as marking a happy beginning to the end of Covid protocols: I am practically salivating at the idea of cross-region competition with near-zero ping.
Zachmazer, Knoqd, and StayNaughty won NA’s tourney by a decent margin, while the rest of the field was much closer—going into the sixth and final game, only a few points separated 2nd-8th place, and by the end those were decided by a margin of only 10 points. In EU, Gambit took a dominant victory, notching two wins over six games and looking, in general, incredibly scary to fight against, the kind of performance that made me think they’ll do very well in a LAN situation. 2nd place went to COOLER, who have been playing incredibly well lately, earning their spot at the Winter Circuit Playoffs.
The official broadcast mercifully returned to its usual format, and managed to double its average viewers from the ill-fated Winter Circuit #3 broadcast.
I have a lot going on this week, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. Here’s a quick list of recent developments in the world of Apex:
NiceWigg’s acting debut: Apex is out on the Nintendo Switch, and the popular (and somehow still orgless) controller player NiceWigg was featured in its launch commercial.
Tufi, the beast of Apex: iLootGames has made a video about this “unbannable” cheater who’s been making mischief in ranked lobbies. There’s even a short interview with Tufi, though they don’t say anything particularly interesting. I’m both amused and disturbed that Apex can accommodate a cheater long enough to make them famous, while the whole situation makes it painfully clear that the game’s anticheat efforts need to become more sophisticated than hiring a one-man ban army (with much respect to Hideouts).
Xynoa update: This player, who you probably know by now has been credibly accused by multiple figures in the Apex community of using racial slurs and inciting racist harassment, was excluded from the second season of Series E despite being eligible for a sponsorship. He has continued playing in the ALGS and GLL, however. I reached out to EA’s PR for a comment, asking whether the ALGS investigated these accusations, but haven’t heard anything back. I also reached out to thekine, a streamer for SolaFide and one of the figures in the community who denounced Xynoa. At first, he said “stuff might happen about it soon.” Nothing had happened by Winter Circuit #4, however. When I followed up, he suggested that Respawn/EA could still take action on the issue. We’ll see if Xynoa will still be participating in the ALGS by the time of the LCQ; if so, I have to assume that EA/Respawn is aware of the accusations but either doesn’t find them credible or thinks they don’t merit censure. Xynoa recently retweeted this:
Altiora esports enters Apex:
Altiora Esports has signed Bottom 20. While it’s always nice when an org enters Apex, there is reason to be wary of Altiora. They recently dropped their successful Canadian Rainbow Six roster due to visa issues, and planned on hiring an American roster to replace them. Instead, they exited the Rainbow Six esports scene with little warning, leaving a LAN league about to start its 2021 season a team short and the new players it was about to hire abruptly out of a job.
Bottom 20 is a great team that has been absolutely on fire lately, so let’s hope they make the playoffs from the Winter Circuit Last Chance Qualifier and that Altiora will become a successful presence in Apex esports.
GLL Masters Spring teaser:
There’s been no new info on this front so far, but it looks like GLL will be organizing a another weekly league format with a fairly substantial prize pool that rewards consistency over many (many) games, much like their “Masters Summer” event.
What to watch:
Twitch Rivals at 5 PM EST today (about an hour from now). A $50,000 prize pool will ensure a sweaty lobby, while the mix of pros and non-pros will, as always, lead to some interesting mismatches and probably some dominant performances from the top squads. Apropos of absolutely nothing, it looks like TSM’s ImperialHal and Snip3down will be playing on the same team :).
