Review of ALGS Summer Circuit tournament 3 and crunch at Respawn
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A huge congrats to fan favorite Complexity, who nabbed the win yesterday in North America’s third online tournament of the Summer Circuit. This is still a brand-new roster for Complexity. Lou recently stepped down to pursue streaming and was replaced for the moment by iShiny, who may have secured a permanent spot on the team with this win.
At least one fan seems to have enjoyed the official ALGS broadcast of the tournament, discussing its improvement in a thread that also has comments from an observer who worked on the tournament and EA’s competitive liaison Shahin Kanafchian.
Unfortunately, the part of the official broadcast I watched suffered from technical difficulties and perplexing casting choices. I tuned in to see broadcast audio cut out, and shortly afterward the casters failed to follow TSM hunting down and killing Rogue in the early game—cutting away in the middle of an intense game of hide and seek to follow a different ‘storyline’.
On the other hand, I loved how the official broadcast integrated player comms—I think one of the reasons that fans prefer player streams for now is because viewers get complete access to the pro point of view, including all the comms, infighting, and hype. It was great to see the official stream convey that sense of being ‘on-board’ with a team by using player audio.
One game had an extremely bad circle that served as a reminder that competitive Apex is a work in progress. Watching professionals compete to see who can time heals best was anticlimactic, while Euriece’s team got killed by the train moving over the circle—not something the casters of the ALGS wanted to discuss. It’s kind of funny, but mostly just heartbreaking. Until broadcasters acknowledge that Apex can be a frustrating game to spectate and play, these official streams will continue to feel more like public relations efforts than legitimate commentary.
Team Liquid absolutely popped off in the 6th and last game of the tournament to secure second place, but Liquid’s Nocturnal died due to a glitch where Wraith’s void-walk gets cancelled. The footage is below.
Here’s where the Summer Circuit stands now, showing teams that have already qualified for the playoffs, with thanks to Zac Conely for the spreadsheet. Here, the slots labeled ‘NA SC LCQ’ stands for Last Chance Qualifier, so there are plenty of playoff spots up for grabs, even after the next online tournament is played.
Crunch at Respawn
This negative review of Respawn left on Glassdoor, the site that lets employees post anonymous comments about their current and former companies, made news last week after it blew up on Reddit.
Things got weird when Chad Grenier, Game Director at Respawn and leader of the Apex team, began defending the company in the Reddit comment thread:
You can find his full comments here. To me, they read like juvenile excuses. At times Grenier seemed to imply that the employee in question was just a disgruntled outlier—then said it was normal that everyone at Respawn crunches because they’re ‘rock stars and do-ers’. Saying the company is like family and then immediately denying the problem is kind of bonkers, and I don’t think going hard in the Reddit thread is the kind of community engagement demonstrated by a good leader.
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