GLL secures $56 million in funding while third-party Apex tournaments thrive
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter for everyone in the competitive Apex community
It’s been another busy week in the world of Apex. First off, Pathfinder was fixed in a patch on Monday. If you don’t play Pathfinder or didn’t see the problem active, the last patch caused a glitch where his shoulder filled up a good third of the screen after a grapple. Tournaments were played with this glitch active. There was apparently no communication from Respawn about it until Monday, which is an unfortunate and senseless situation, particularly when Riot is out there communicating the tiniest balance details and banning entire maps from Valorant for small exploits.
However, Respawn did great with a different bug, one that caused the Sentinel to become semi-auto. The Sentinel is currently vaulted while they work on a fix. Communication about this problem was transparent and timely. Of course, they couldn’t have just vaulted Pathfinder, so these are hardly equivalent issues, but hearing silence from devs on one glitch and a prompt, transparent response on another is baffling.
GLL secures $56 million in funding
GLL, the company behind weekly Community Cups, scrims, and the Masters Summer event got a big chunk of money to keep doing what they’re doing. Big congrats to them, and let’s hope some of that money goes into larger prize pools.
Realm’s Summit Series
Meanwhile, the competitive Apex subreddit had a tough discussion about NRG leaving in the middle of Realm’s Summit Series tournament. You can watch a clip of what led to them leaving here, thanks to redditors Craftiest and SanStacks. Many commenters thought NRG’s behavior was unacceptable. CLG’s Madness and Hill offered some perspective on why a situation like that might tilt a signed team so much:
A factor that wasn’t discussed as much on this issue is the low incenctive for any team to take these matches seriously, whether the roster is signed to a pro org or not. Financially, the Summit Series has an unfortunate resemblance to the format of GLL’s Masters Summer, which Snip3down called “a slap in the face.” But let’s take a closer look.
The finals, on November 21st, will be fought for $5000, a good chunk of change, and pay out down to 5th place. As a fan, I enjoy the juicy NA vs. EU storyline of the finals too—the top ten teams from both regions fighting to see which is dominant. Similarly, the total prize pool of $20,000 is nothing to scoff at.
But that $20,000 is spread over two months of play. Each six-match day on the Summit Series schedule pays out just $1600 over both regions, and nets the winning teams just $500, or a little over $165 per player (I believe there’s also a $75 award for the day’s top fragger, a nice gesture).
There are six ‘regular season’ days in the series, not counting the qualifiers and the finals, so it’s a lot of Apex over the next month with no guarantee of any financial renumeration for that time. It’s great for fans, of course. We get a lot of Apex from Realm this month and next. But as we saw during GLL’s Masters Summer, it may be more profitable for players to stream ranked on Twitch than to compete in an event like this, and because the stakes are low on a regular season day in the series, there’s little reason for any team to take it as seriously as the ALGS. These lower stakes can lead to aggressive pushes or risky plays that can easily be construed by teammates as throwing and opponents as griefing.
At the same time, these matches can also be showcases for up-and-coming squads, who are thirsty to get signed to an org and eager to show off their skills. For whatever reason, NA has a far higher percentage of unsigned teams than EU, and I believe issues like this are bound to happen in that kind of lobby.
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Despite hiccups like the NRG ragequit and my fretting over prize pools, events like the Summit Series (which is sponsored by the headset and keyboard company HyperX) show that the third-party Apex scene is developing nicely of late. Realm is hardly the only company improving the health of the third-party ecosystem.
Esports Arena Series E
I covered the announcement of Esports Arena Series E last month, a semi-pro league that will pay 9 teams $500 a month per player, sponsored by a variety of large corporate brands. While it’s still a modest amount, Series E pays far more players more equitably than any other non-ALGS Apex tournament to date, leading to a guaranteed source of income and a nice insitutional partnership for players on the top-performing squads. I have no idea what the ‘draft’ of October 21st will look like, but I’ll watch it and report back. Let’s go team Cheez-it!
Nerd Street Gamers
Elsewhere on the scene, there’s the Nerd Street Gamers Challenger Tournament series, with four $1000 prize pool qualifiers leading to a $10,000 Invitational in January 2021—double the prize pool of the Summit Series final.
RCO’s Juka Bowl
But my favorite of these third-party tournaments remains RCO Esport’s Juka Bowl, organized by community fixtures HisandHersLive, which requires at least one female on each qualifying roster.
Since I last reported on them, the Juka Bowl has come up in the world. They also have a $10,000 tournament going, but teams only have to play three weeks of qualifiers, each with a prize pool of $375, to get into the final tournament.
That makes the upcoming Juka Bowl series more appealing than Realm’s Summit Series because it has both a lower time committment and a higher prize pool, while the mandated female player on each roster is a fun and inclusive twist.
Gdolphn’s Royal Random Rumble
Finally, the talented Danish player and TSM coach Gdolphn tweeted a wacky idea for a tournament with randomized teams every game around a week ago, and it’s now a reality. The tournament is set for October 29th, with a crowdfunded prize pool similar to his 1 vs. 1 tournament.
Problems aside, the community has a ton of stuff to be optimistic about these days. Shroud, still one of the world’s most popular gamers, played Apex for a bit on his stream and confirmed what we all already know: that it’s the best Battle Royale currently on the market.
Interview requests
For future issues, I’m working on getting interviews from players and other figures on the scene, so if you have someone awesome in mind, holler at me in the comments.
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I think it would be cool to interview some of the folks who work in the backgound. For example, a financial person at a player org or an event org like GLL or ALGS to understand how the money is raised and all the things that need to be paid for. There are so many things happening in the background while most fans only see the streamer's perspective - it's interesting to learn more about the business as a whole.