New rules and pro league invites cause a hectic preseason scramble
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter about the triumphs and tribulations of a popular new esport
Three weeks ago, I covered the rule change to the ALGS that prohibits organizations from fielding more than one squad in this year’s pro circuit:
Despite flying under the radar, this new rule has wide-ranging implications. For one, it will force some of the best Apex players in the world off their rosters. It will also churn the pool of free agents, destabilize the current meta-strategy among team owners and operators, and will ensure that the awkward situation of two squads from the same organization fighting each other (or not fighting each other, as is more likely) won’t happen at a global LAN tournament, where big bucks will be on the line. That fixes a problem from the Poland LAN, where Team Liquid and FNATIC each fielded two rosters, unfairly increasing their chances of draping an olive laurel on the winning squad.
At the time, the change was lauded by some figures in the community, while strongly criticized by others—many of whom continue to campaign for the rule to be thrown out, arguing that it put large numbers of Apex players out of a job.
Zach Beckwith, a co-owner of the small org Specter Esports, strongly questioned the logic behind the change:
“There’s thousands of players now that were signed to orgs getting paid that now do not have an org to compete for,” he wrote, in another tweet. I asked Beckwith to elaborate on the change from the perspective of a team owner looking to compete in year 2 of the ALGS, and he replied via email. “As an organization owner, I get asked daily if we are looking for competitive players. I’ve had multiple players ask to be a part of the org and we honestly didn’t know the rule was fully in place until last week. I currently have one NA roster, but was looking to expand my organization to other regions—since we are a smaller org, we are just getting going with expansion…I’ve never been against having multiple teams because it gives players a stepping stone to learn what an organization is, how to behave within an org, and gives them the ability to work with people who have experience in the industry. That in turn helps them grow their streaming numbers, teaches them how to advertise, and they learn the importance of keeping a schedule as well as get the support of the org.”
“Ultimately, this is going to injure the scene, not help it,” he finished. Beckwith was also concerned that these rules represented a step toward a future in which smaller organizations would be forced out of Apex entirely, pointing out that a limited (and thus valuable) number of spots in a league format could push pro Apex toward a franchised system where organizations without significant cash reserves would be barred from entry in the top tier of the esport.
There’s been a flurry of trades and acquisitions in the last week or two. Some of it was due to the ‘one squad, one org’ rule change; other moves were set in motion by invitations to the pro league handed out on a tight deadline.
The full list of invited teams and their rosters is here. There were definitely a few squads on the invite list that raised eyebrows due to a lack of accolades or high profiles in the scene, while other roster changes were tough to understand: CLG dropped a highly successful roster and picked up an untested squad with only a fraction of the combined ALGS points, leading one Reddit commenter (I’ve forgotten who, my bad) to suggest that CLG’s move signaled an unwillingness to invest in expensive players and a general pessimism about the future of the scene.
But CLG was only the tip of the iceberg for roster changes. Talented pros without a dedicated squad found themselves on the hunt—either for an org to sponsor them, or for a coveted spot on a team with an invite. Claraphi joined XSET. Bowswer was dropped from Renegades but ended up on the eRA Eternity roster. Aqualix disappeared. The player mercyonlyy tweeted that he had an offer from an organization—he just needed two cracked teammates to join up in the next 5 days.
Both the NA and EU squads of Kungarna were invited to the pro league, but ALGS rules state that only one of these invited squads could accept the invitation. That left Kungarna management to decide which of their two extremely good rosters would go into Year 2 of the ALGS. It was NA—even though their EU team just won GLL’s Arenas Summer tournament.
Lest we forget, the pro league allows teams to skip qualifying matches and the second-tier Challengers circuit, moving directly to tournaments with bigger prize pools and better competition.
Teams with invites to the pro league essentially get a free pass through what may turn out to be quite a grueling competition. These preseason qualifiers will be played as what looks like four separate tournaments this fall: on September 11-13 and 25-27; and again in October, on 2-4, 9-11. These are, to the best of my knowledge, unpaid (a look at the ALGS rules shows prizing starts at regular season play).
The pro league then begins on the 16th and 17th of October. So qualifiers will considerably lengthen the ALGS season for teams that had to play them, with no financial renumeration for doing well in those matches beyond the opportunity to potentially earn prize money during the regular season.
Registration opened on August 25th and closes on September 8th for the presason qualifiers. While that may not seem like a particularly small window to register a team, the squads that received invitations for the pro league appeared to be stuck with a much tighter deadline: Gnaske, who was playing for Aqualix at the time, announced on Twitter that his team only had a few days to scout and recruit a new third player after his teammate Yuki left to pursue a different opportunity, stating that the deadline to respond to the invitation was August 29th.
Gnaske and SirDel recruited Badoli to Aqualix in time to meet the deadline:
But Aqualix was nowhere to be seen on the list of invited pro league teams. Gnaske, SirDel and Badoli will go into the EMEA pro league as an unsigned roster. Meanwhile, it turned out that Alliance had picked up Yuki, replacing iPN, a longtime member of the roster. Apropos of absolutely nothing, Yuki has 10,000 more Twitch followers and is a much more regular streamer. (Researching their pro careers for this post, I also discovered that, apparently, iPN is an acronym that stands for “I play naked”—not exactly LAN-appropriate dress code.
Last week’s collective action by streamers, #ADayOffTwitch, asked streamers to spend a day offline to pressure Twitch into doing something about widespread abusive raids on marginalized creators. Apex that day was a ghost town: Draynilla, NiceWigg, Snip3down, and other popular streamers were offline. NICKMERCS and NRG’s LuluLuvely were prominent exceptions. One of the most popular streamers on the platform, Lulu treated it like just another day on the job until someone in her chat questioned why she was streaming; she reacted defensively and said that the protest would do nothing. “Not streaming for a day isn’t going to be enough,” she said. “Don’t come after people for streaming! Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.” Later, she apologized on Twitter—twice.
If you read The Final Circle, chances are that you already know that tap-strafing has been removed from the game. The mechanic, which relied on binding W to the mouse’s scroll wheel to enable massive, sudden changes in directional velocity, was, to put it mildly, a divisive topic in the Apex community.
Try not to get too hyped about the return of LAN, because in-person competition continues to be thwarted by the complications posed by the lingering global pandemic. The LCS Championship for League of Legends, scheduled to be played in a sold-out stadium full of fans, has been changed to a venue without spectators. Similarly, Overwatch League events will be held without fans.
HisandHersLive are putting on a $30,000 tournament series.
The esports content site Esports (weird name if you ask me) will honor top performers of the pro circuit first year with a set of awards. Community fixtures like Singh Labs and Kano, who edits Apex Liquipedia, are among the judges.
Esdesu wants us to stop calling her the best female player in the world.