GLL Masters Spring breaks on its debut
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter about esports
It feels like it’s been a minute since I dropped an edition of The Final Circle. I hope everyone enjoyed the Winter Circuit Playoffs! Last week I was in upstate NY driving my girlfriend around on a reporting trip, and then I was busy with other work, so I wasn’t able to find time for a big Apex debrief. I do have something to show for it, though! I came out with two big stories back to back: in my debut for Wired, I wrote about the booming business of game collecting ($660,000 copy of Super Mario, anyone?). And for Launcher, the games section at the Washington Post, I wrote about the future of the Republican party on Twitch in the wake of AOC’s massive streaming success.
I should also admit to some fatigue with the endless Apex season. Without a solid competitive roadmap post-Championship, I hope that there’s a nice break coming. I’ve been writing this newsletter nearly every week for almost a year, and I think it’s important to recharge every once in awhile, to consider where The Final Circle is going, how it gets there, and why I’m doing it. More on that in the next month or so, but for now, let’s get to it:
A buggy start to Masters Spring for GLL
Cooler’s rise and fall
Late payments
What’s happening around Apex
A buggy Masters Spring for GLL
GLL’s Master Spring had a tough debut yesterday. A persistent and thorny bug affected the first round of the $100,000 competition in EU, sending pros into conniptions and leaving the GLL administration scrambling for a fix. Ultimately, the competition was suspended for the day after many competitors simply couldn’t get into the lobby. GLL hasn’t been on very good terms with the community for a long time and this bug didn’t exactly heal the divide:
Let’s hope that today’s rescheduled competition gets off to a better start.
Cooler’s rise and fall
In my post about how wishing for LANs wouldn't make them happen, I wrote that 2020 was an "unpredictable and and frankly calamitous year for more than one esports scene." Despite booming profits at big companies like EA and Activision Blizzard, many esports orgs struggled during the pandemic. The rise and fall of Cooler is a great example of how precarious success in esports can be, particularly for teams that don't come from legacy games and haven’t developed robust revenue streams over a long period of time (looking at you, League of Legends esports). Cooler, which rose to prominence when their duos team won the Fortnite World Cup in 2019, was founded by a French film director and a professional poker player. Unlike a team like TSM, Team Liquid, CLG, or Complexity, who all enjoy high-value corporate partnerships and cash in on strong brand appeal, Cooler was always a bit of an underdog, competing only in the crowded Fortnite scene and then picking up an Apex team near the end of its existence. When times got tough, I have to imagine there was no deal with General Motors (TSM), Miller Lite (Complexity), Bud Light (CLG), or Monster Energy (Team Liquid) to help keep the lights on in the office. Lest we forget, a similar lack of cash shuttered the Danish esports org North just a few months ago.
Cooler’s duos victory in New York City’s Arthur Ashe Stadium, in front of thousands and thousands of fans, was the high water mark for the team. In the poignant farewell video posted to their YouTube account yesterday, footage of the event is featured prominently. Without that $3 million win, it’s unlikely that Cooler would have made it this far—the org netted around $3.3 million in prize money in total, despite hiring over a dozen Fortnite players over their 3 year run.
And their efforts in Apex, while admirable, weren’t enough to change Cooler’s fortunes. They got some great results, but failed to notch any big wins, and the team ended their run with just over $12,000 in total earnings.
Late payments
Late payments have been a hot topic in the Apex community recently, as players revealed some tournament payments from GLL took many months to arrive and even, at least in one case, never arrived at all. It’s a problem that plagues even top-tier esports (in League of Legends, Astralis was fined $6,000 by Riot just a few month ago for failing to pay its players on time) and, as a freelancer who’s been in the same situation more than once, it’s an issue very dear to my heart. Now it looks like vein, who was signed in March to the slightly dubious org Altiora Esports, is having problems getting paid. Not a good look after picking up a brand-new roster for an organization that is trying to recover from credibility issues. For those of you who missed the initial dish on Altiora, here’s what I wrote about them last month:
As others have commented, the fact that these issues have to be taken to social media before they get resolved is at best deeply unprofessional—and in some other trades, it would be considered criminal.
This is a topic I would be interested in covering outside of my newsletter, so if you or someone you know has struggled to get paid for work/winnings in Apex or other esports, please reach out to ethanadavison@gmail.com.
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Assorted news around Apex
Team Flavor of the Month, who won EU’s Winter Circuit Playoffs, is looking for an org, joining Nessy in the patient search for a steady paycheck. As smaller teams in EU go out of business, big North American orgs are still picking up steam and investing in players: Apryze joined Complexity as a content creator, and Spacestation Gaming, owned by the Utah Jazz NBA team, returned to Apex, signing Claraphii, Frexs, and xenials. They were one of the early orgs on the scene, competing at X Games and the Poland LAN. The popular content creator Daltoosh left SoaR. PowPow officially left CLG and Lou replaced him.
The Apex speedrunning community is heating up, with new records in categories like ‘fastest to 1000 kills’ and at least a few players speeding through Bronze IV to Predator rank.
The coach night raven is looking for a team, and on April 9th (this Friday) at 4:30 PM PDT, he’ll be talking with Respawn balance designer John Larson and Team Liquid’s coach Hodsic about all things game balance.
The recent apparent increase in cheaters and the game’s lack of robust anticheat is driving some players absolutely insane. A video explainer about cheating from Jason McCord, the game’s design director, in a new series called “Respawn Responds”, seemed to display a somewhat complacent attitude toward the problem.
Finally, GuhRL is casting an all-female tourney this Sunday, April 11th, at 12 PM EST. The prize pool is listed as “Joy?”, but I have a feeling the women competing would rather be paid in cash. Games like Valorant are really pulling away from Apex when it comes to its focus on its female players.