Players describe slimy tactics, raising doubts about the Esports Arena Series E sponsorship, and a review of Autumn Circuit #2
This is The Final Circle, a competitive Apex newsletter that believes players are entitled to seek legal counsel before they sign anything
First off, a big congrats all around to the Autumn Circuit Regional #2 winners. There’s a full round-up of the tournament below, after the discussion of Series E.
Esports Arena Series E controversy
When Esports Arena Series E was announced, the competitive Apex community was hyped. $500 a month per player was hardly big money, but, as I and many others believed at the time, it represented a step in the right direction for teams and players looking to break into the professional scene, a great semi-pro opportunity that improved the health of the competitive ecosystem. I even hoped it could lead to team Cheez-it Apex merch.
Then Sola Fide’s Oddity raised concerns about the contract negotiations—or lack thereof:
Muffins then declined to sign the contract he and his team had earned over weeks of competition, and wasn’t shy about discussing why:
I’ve linked the full thread from Muffins here; there’s a discussion about it on Reddit here. Notably, Rkn also turned down the contract. The Realm, another semi-pro enterprise that relies on large time investments from players and low financial compensation to make money, then jumped in with a tone-deaf call for orgless Apex players to simply sign themselves:
The tweet prompted immediate derision from pros, who understand more than anyone that wishing to get signed and have an org salary doesn’t make it so:
I’ll be watching the Esports Arena draft day tomorrow; I’ll be eager to see how they work around the fact that the most talented teams over the Series E qualifiers have now declined any further involvement with them. But let’s move on to better news.
Autumn Circuit Regional #2
This weekend’s Autumn Circuit tourney was some of the most entertaining Apex I’ve seen this year. In North America, DidWeMakeIt?, an orgless team with two players who started their Apex careers on PS4, clutched up with back-to-back wins in games 5 and 6 to beat Rogue by 1 point, who have been absolutely on fire lately. It was a shocking triumph for a team without a proven track record, one that was struggling to compete through the first four rounds, and a reminder that anything can happen in a competitive BR. Hill, Pandxrz and Sauceror took 3rd.
The NA juggernaut TSM peformed well in 4th place, with excellent placements. But not nearly as well as they’d hoped.
Their pickup of Snip3down and hiring of coach Gdolphn has generated perhaps too-high expectations, and it looks like they still have adjustments to make before nabbing a big tourney win. They looked confident in one moment and directionless the next, and essentially threw a couple of those games.
Other strong teams did much worse, however. Sentinels, CLG, Complexity, and AimAssist all finished outside the top ten, unable to generate big games or consistent placement.
In the EU, the popular streamer MaTaFe’s team Orgless and Hungry won the day in a highly competitive field. It’s great to see MaTaFe and Kouhia pick up a win after leaving Ad Hoc just recently. In second place, North enjoyed another great performance, but, like TSM, failed to finish strong, with a needless push against a strong defensive position in the last game. The Russian team MajorPushers finished in 3rd.
A big congrats to 1907 Fenerbahçe, who won Middle East and Africa, making it back-to-back wins for them on the Autumn Circuit. Loto Gaming won South America, while previous winners Millions Gaming finished in a respectable 5th place. In APAC North, the Japanese team Crazy Raccoon put on a dominant show, winning an appropriately insane 3 out of 6 games and netting 85 points, while Fennel and T1, in second and third place, were left in the dust at 47 and 45 points respectively. In APAC South, after Made in Thailand Team 1 won Autumn Circuit #1, Made in Thailand Team 2 took a turn on the winner’s podium, continuing the extremely strong Thai performance in that region. The Indian Apex team TooMuchAssist (TMA), recently spotlighted on the competitive Apex subreddit by user Apexflatline, finished in a respectable 12th.
Winners of Autumn Circuit #2 took home $6,000 in NA and EU, and $3000 in SA, MEA, APAC North and South. The full standings can be found at Liquipedia, with my thanks as always to Kanø for most of these figures, who works tirelessly to make sure fans get accurate stats faster than the official ALGS broadcast can manage.
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PGL Showdown
Qualifiers are underway today and tomorrow for this weekend’s $100,000 PGL Showdown, where a much larger prize pool is up for grabs. Competitors in North America and EU, each with a prize pool of $30,000, are playing for three times as much cash as the weekend’s Autumn Circuit; while everyone else gets twice as much, with $10,000 each going to SA, MEA, APAC North and South.
You can check out the official broadcast of the EU finals this Saturday, October 24th at 12 noon Central European Time (that’s a yawn-inducing 6 AM Eastern Standard Time) and the NA finals this Sunday, October 25th, at 12 noon Pacific Daylight Time (3 PM Eastern Standard Time).
Aim assist in the crosshairs
Since a virtually unknown controller team just won an ALGS tourney, and if you somehow missed me plugging it all over Reddit, it’s a good time to check out my article from last week about aim assist, cross-platform play, and controller players over at Launcher, the Washington Post’s games section.
Though the article is also about Fortnite, Warzone and Valorant, exploring approaches to handling input methods across different esports, I squeezed Apex in there too, and even interviewed Daltoosh for it, who was happy to talk about good old R-99 spray and why he gets killed by M&K players.
I also spoke to a human-computer interaction expert in Saskatoon about this, and many fascinating details did NOT make it into the still-long final draft, but one of my favorites is how I learned that the computer mouse is the fastest and most accurate aiming device humanity has yet produced—the only thing faster than the mouse is the human eye, which can acquire targets faster, but struggles to select them. I, for one, can’t wait to get owned by eye-aimers in 2040.
Until next week!
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