Results of GLL's Masters Summer and the health of the scene

This is The Final Circle, a newsletter for competitive Apex

First time here? Subscribe to The Final Circle below and get high-quality Apex news and analysis delivered directly to your inbox.

Results of GLL’s Masters Summer

Congrats to Rogue, who cemented a win in the Grand Finals of GLL’s Masters Summers event—the same event that Snip3down described as “a slap in the face” and not worth the time investment of playing so many matches in a YouTube video last month.

Health of the scene

EA put up some huge numbers in its recent financial disclosures, reporting more than $1.1 billion in profit in its fiscal year 2020, while Apex prize pools continue to stagnate. Just 1% of that profit would be enough to fund the game handsomely.

A recent post from reddit user ‘iseetrolledpeople’ pointed out that TSM’s ImperialHal achievement of being the first player to hit $100,000 in tournament earnings shows how dismal the prize situation has become. Comments in the thread focused on Hal, the top earner in Apex, but the financial picture looks a lot worse for the majority of talented pros who compete alongside him, most of whom do not make significant revenue from streaming and sponsorships. Not everyone can be Timmy…

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the X Games tournament, a good time to revisit the health of the game. 2019’s big LANs were potentially the height of popular interest in competitive Apex. Liquipedia’s Apex page shows just 3 ‘Tier 1’ Apex tournaments: The X Games, the Preseason Invitational in Krakow, and 2020’s indefinitely postponed PGL Bucharest.

Fans are hopeful for the return of LAN events with significant funding and promotion. But there is no guarantee that LAN on its own will magically bring back large prize pools, or that coronavirus restrictions surrounding in-person gatherings will be lifted by the fall.

Community-led tournaments like the Daltoosh Invitational and the TSM Invitational are becoming more prevalent, but thus far have failed to garner significant reach or large cash prizes. Increasing the popular appeal of the game by releasing crossplay and making Apex available on Steam and Nintendo Switch this fall will hopefully widen the player base and drum up enough interest in the competitive scene to justify the expense of funding tournaments.

Apex is still very popular; as of writing this it’s the 11th most-watched channel on Twitch. As a shooter, it loses out in viewership only to juggernauts CoD, Fortnite, Valorant and CS:GO.

Setting aside a direct comparison with more popular shooters that have much larger prize pools, those Apex Twitch numbers still put it solidly ahead of games with established professional scenes like Overwatch and PUBG.

PUBG is the 22nd most-watched channel on Twitch. Its professional scene has been bleeding organizations and viewers for a long time, dropping 37% of its playerbase in 2019. And yet its 2019 Global Championship boasted a prize pool of $4 million plus bonuses, for a total of $5.9 million. Last year it ranked 4th in total prize pool, behind only Fortnite, Dota 2, and CS:GO.

PUBG’s major online tournaments throughout the pandemic have offered $200,000 prize pools in each region—$50,000 to the winning team, with a total of $800,000 awarded across four regions. The ALGS, on the other hand, is giving out $6,000 to winners of Super Regionals and $36,000 to the playoff winners—$500,000 in total for the entire Summer Circuit and its playoffs.

Overwatch is another interesting comparison because it’s had similar problems to Apex, losing pros to Valorant and struggling during the transition to online-only play. But the franchise model set up by Activision Blizzard has provided stability and steady income to the players lucky enough to make the cut in OWL. In 2019 the minimum salary for an OWL player was $50,000 a year, and the average player salary was $114,000. All players in OWL are provided healthcare and other benefits.

So why does Apex lag behind these games in player pay, despite its larger viewership numbers?

For PUBG, at least, part of the answer is related to the game’s enduring popularity in markets like South Asia, numbers not fully captured by Twitch viewership. PUBG is dominant in countries like India, where PUBG mobile is also popular and offers cash prizes. Despite a petition with over 17,000 signatures asking EA to invest in server infrastructure there, there is no competitive Apex in India at all. India, the second-most populous country on Earth, is not allowed to compete in the ALGS. Apex is also struggling in East Asia: Reddit user Aveeno_o commented recently that the Apex scene in Korea “is pretty dead competitively” thanks to endemic cheating, bad server performance, and org and talent loss.

One specific advantage Overwatch pros have over Apex pros is that they have collective bargaining power. The formation of a player association (I hesitate to use the word union, which haven’t had much traction in esports thus far) that fights for things like a minimum base salary for pros and other benefits might have a revitalizing effect on a scene that attracts but has struggled to retain talented players—a fact probably best illustrated by Liquipedia’s list of most searched Apex players, with two players in the top five who no longer play the game.

With a decent livelihood secured for all pro Apex players who’ve reached certain benchmarks (maybe measured by ALGS points), we could expect continuity among rosters to increase, allowing more persistent competitive storylines to develop. I suspect one of the reasons we talk about TSM so much is not only because they’re great, which they are, but also because they’re one of the game’s few prominent rosters still intact from last year.

Release date may also be a factor. Both Overwatch and PUBG have been out for much longer than Apex, and have had the time to develop sustainable professional scenes. If that’s the case, Apex fans have reason to be optimistic for the future. In this scenario, we only need to wait while the game’s scene gathers momentum. Still, Apex may have a lot more growing pains to get through before it reaches maturity.

While it’s true that many orgs and compelling players have left Apex, the game is not on a franchise model, so teams are free to invest and leave the scene as they please. If prize pools and viewership come back, there’s no reason why established teams like Cloud 9 or 100Thieves wouldn’t take another look at the competitive scene.

Some housekeeping

As I figure out what this newsletter is going to grow into, I’d love to hear from my early subscribers about the kind of content they want to see. High-quality analysis of gameplay, team comps and results are becoming more frequently posted on the competitive Apex subreddit, so I’m wondering where The Final Circle fits into this space. I’m not really into the idea of spamming your inboxes with multiple issues per week so you can get caught up on the results of Esports Arena #15. I plan on sticking to one issue a week, hopefully going deeper on the topics I find compelling while covering the scene’s growth as we move toward crossplay.

I’ve also been thinking about doing profiles of players who aren’t major personalities or usual topics of discussion, with highlights of their gameplay and some background on them. Is there interest in that kind of thing? If you have an idea for something you’d like to see in the next issue, or a recurring feature, let me know in the comments. It’s ok if it’s completely bonkers…

Liked the post? Send the link to a friend, or subscribe to The Final Circle and get high-quality Apex news and analysis in your inbox on a weekly basis.