Return from Planet of the Ape Meta, teams drop out of GLL's Masters Summer, how to make a living from Apex

This is The Final Circle, a competitive Apex newsletter

Teams drop out of GLL’s Masters Summer

Snip3down’s video about pro pay seems to have had some impact on his colleagues. Before the first day of GLL league play started, Zach, a former Flyquest player, announced that his team (completed by CLG’s Nokokopuffs and Knoqd) would be dropping out of the GLL Masters Summer event, citing the importance of growing their Twitch channels.

Shortly afterward, Complexity dropped out of the event as well.

Later that day, however, Zach tweeted that he had never confirmed the team was officially dropping out.

There wasn’t much sympathy for Zach among the pro community, but GLL could have checked in with the team before offically taking them off the roster. Instead, without the team reaching out to GLL, or hearing anything from GLL in an official capacity, they were removed.

Zach took the development in stride, despite GLL’s arguably unprofessional response:

This isn’t the first time that players have been thrawthed by GLL’s administration. Pro anger and confusion with GLL’s decisions have been hallmarks of the company’s tenure administrating pro Apex.

How to make a living from Apex

TSM’s ImperialHal didn’t mince words about the teams that had dropped out. But his shit-talking, excerpted below, led to an interesting discussion of the best way to make a living playing Apex. Zach’s position from the start was that playing in the GLL tournament wasn’t financially prudent.

Hal argues that placing well in tournaments has led to him becoming a top Apex streamer.

Zach counters that Hal’s rise came at a time when Apex was much better funded, and appears to suggest that the risk of sinking significant investments of time and energy and then not placing well in a GLL tournament wasn’t worth it for him personally.

Return from Planet of the Ape Meta

Lastly, the first day of GLL league play saw leading teams like TSM return to their traditional team comps and dominate. Wattson fences were more plentiful on the map in both lobbies, taking back her place on squads from our gaseous friend Caustic—a huge vindication for the more conservative voices on the competitive Apex subreddit who’ve argued since the beginning of this patch that a meta shift to Crypto/Revenant compositions was overblown. Tension continues between fans who love to watch constant team fights and those who prefer the slower, more deliberate style that’s dominated the game since Wattson’s launch and the end of the grenade spam meta.