Tournament results, the return of the match point format, Respawn hires its first Apex sheriff

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Tournament results

A huge congrats to CLG’S brand-new roster of Madness, PowPow, and Vaxlon for victory in their first official tourney together, the ALGS Summer Circuit Super Regional #4. This is a huge vindication for Madness. Like his former teammates Nokokopuffs and NiceWigg, he was signed as a solo to CLG for months and had to develop his own roster, while the org probably waited to see which of them could post consistently successful tournament results. Sounds stressful…

In EU, Nessy took the top prize of $6,000—the same team of Graceful, Jmw, and maydeelol who were dropped from their org Triumph at the end of July when the team withdrew from Apex. A bittersweet victory for sure.

Team Liquid’s Flanker lost the power at his house just before the start of the tourney, leaving Casper and Nocturnal to play as a duo the entire tournament—but they still managed to eke out 7th place, and racked up a ton of kill points.

And after wildly entertaining performances as a caster in the Daltoosh Invitational and his ALGS watch parties, Daltoosh joined the official ALGS broadcast in a strong debut. Though he couldn’t curse or drink on the official stream, Daltoosh did an amazing job, showing his natural inclination toward the role.

Return of the match point format

There’s been some huffing and puffing among pros on Twitter about the format of the $140,000 ALGS Summer Circuit Grand Finals, which is bringing back match point format. The format, last seen at last year’s $500,000 LAN tournament in Krakow (shown above), requires that the team that wins the tournament also wins its last game. Specifics below:

Many pros seem to dread this format, since it means that strong, consistent performances—say, lots of 2nd or 3rd place finishes with kill points across the tournament’s 10 games—isn’t enough to win.

The winning team has to completely frag out and dominate the competition, ending the tournament on an epic win. I suspect fans love this (I love this) because it leads to incredibly tense, high-stakes moments. At the same time, as we saw in Poland, it forces teams to potentially play lots of extra games, tiring them out, while allowing teams that were lagging behind in points to catch up and potentially eke out a victory from just one lucky win.

The Super Regional format has also recently come under fire from pros because it mixes regions with dramatically different levels of competition. For instance:

Regions like MEA (Middle East and Africa) have less competitive lobbies, and the teams that advance from these regions struggle to compete in tougher EU-dominated lobbies. But MEA teams are guaranteed spots in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) finals for these Super Regional tournaments, and secure the same amount of ALGS points as their counterparts who play in far more competitive lobbies, fighting against much tougher foes.

For instance, the two teams above, FB and Hallediciler, were dominant in the MEA finals, securing a spot in the EMEA finals. But FB placed 19th out of 20th in the EMEA finals and Hallediciler placed 16th out of 20th.

Respawn hires its first Apex sheriff

The law has come to town. After months of ranked lobbies full of cheaters, Respawn has hired a sheriff to bring law and order to Apex. They’ll manually review clips and hand out “bans like nobody’s business lol.” The employee, who I know only by their Discord handle “Hideouts”, also assured players that the Apex anti-cheat will be better in the near future—assurances Apex players have heard many times before. I believe the Discord is open to all, so check it out and join the fight if you’re so inclined.

Whether this will make much of a difference remains to be seen. Until now Apex hasn’t developed a large volunteer force to combat cheating like the groups headed up by Mohamed “GamerDoc” Al-Sharifi in Valorant and Overwatch. Furthermore, the maintenance of a strong anti-cheat is expensive and labor-intensive, well beyond the capabilities of one person with banning power. EA doesn’t seem to have much of an interest in making the Apex anti-cheat competitive with Valorant or CS:GO. On console, which represents the majority of Apex players, there isn’t even a way to report players for suspicious behavior. I have lots more to say about the cheating situation in Apex, including a discussion of strike packs and third-party extensions, but let’s leave it for a different day.

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