With 3 tournaments in 3 weeks, the ALGS broadcast stumbles as it sprints to the finish

This is The Final Circle, a newsletter about Apex Legends

Last week’s topsy-turvy ALGS broadcast

A huge congrats to the winners of Winter Circuit #3. In EU, Flavor of the Month won, the roster formerly signed to Virtus.pro before the org’s exit from Apex. Team Liquid won in NA, notching that squad their first big ALGS win since they dominated their Autumn Circuit Last Chance Qualifier—which didn’t come with any prize money. 1907 Fenerbahçe enjoyed a confident win in MEA. FENNEL took APAC North without a single win, while the third place team, Lag, finished with wins in 2 of the 6 games played. Last but not least, Reignite South won APAC South by a single point over Tom Yum Kung, the former Made in Thailand roster who recently parted ways with that org when they left Apex.

A tidbit from APAC South: Ben Sledge, reporting for the esports site The Loadout, confirmed with Teerachock ‘Killoposz’ Muedin that the Made in Thailand split was the roster’s decision, not the org’s. I’m not sure how seriously to take such a claim, given the financial picture for Apex squads these days and the unfortunate headline that accompanied the reporting (“The best Apex Legends team in the world explains why it split from its org”), but it’s interesting nonetheless. Sledge seems optimistic: “MiTH is now without an Apex Legends team, but we expect it to sign a new roster soon to continue competing in the APAC South region.” Personally, I’d love to see Tom Yum Kung get signed to a new org and to have MiTH come back to Apex, but I’m not holding my breath. I find it far more likely that in a few months they’ll be like Flavor of the Month, Nessy, or MCD—strong rosters with good tournament results, left without dance partners at the ball.

A “new spin” on Apex esports crashes and burns

The bulk or possibly even the entirety of the ALGS production team literally took the weekend off for the third Winter Circuit tournament, a development that aggravated hordes of fans, pros and commentators who watched the official broadcast.

Initially billed as "a new spin” on Apex esports and a “community-driven broadcast”, the stream featured the caster Falloutt heroically trying to be a video editor, audio mixer, tech/IT support, observer, interviewer, and caster all at once—a one-man production team.

TSM gdolphn @gdolphn

Did @PlayApex forget to pay the production queue, what's going on? It's unwatchable. Piss poor quality and two casters talking over eachother.

Falloutt, for his part, deserves a standing ovation for showing up to work and making the best of an impossible situation. But, to be clear, it was an impossible situation. The observing of fights suffered, third-person camera use was shaky at best and negligent at worst; in one part of the EU broadcast, two casters spoke over each other for minutes on end. There were green screens, muted mics, scores checked via Liquipedia, and occasional periods of pure chaos:

SimplyRkn @rknhd

bruh im DEAD LMAO

Since not everyone had the same quality internet, at-home video and audio capabilities, and so on, there was at times a jarring mismatch between the quality of the various streams hosted by Falloutt: some crispy, others that looked and sounded like they were being broadcast from the bottom of the ocean. Joe Lynch, the head of broadcasting at EA, offered up his thanks to the casters who made the improvised production possible.

Others questioned why the production team enjoyed a break while the players grind three weekends in a row:

Tom @TAG_tom_apex

So the production team get a break, but they’re happy to schedule tournaments three weeks in a row? Some of these pros are playing so many high pressure games because of this scheduling https://t.co/c9JUo6qvAU

The Final Circle @UR_Scrubb

Ok, Falloutt has confirmed that they’re giving their #ALGS production team a break, which explains the DIY quality of everything. Casters are currently producing and observing on the fly, basically impossible work even without considering sound mixing etc.

Ultimately, while part of the scheme was to draw viewers to single casters on their personal channel (a perplexing strategy from the jump if we’re being real here), it’s difficult to argue with the numbers. On that score, viewership of the official broadcast was down more than 20% from Winter Circuit #2.

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Various updates

• Balance changes coming March 9th include a Caustic nerf, Gibby nerf, and Horizon nerf, while Wattson and Path are getting a buff. I solicited opinions on the Wattson buff, a small auto-heal on her shields, via Twitter, and COOLER’s Gnaske calculated it will take 200 seconds, that is, over 3 minutes, for Wattson to heal a purple shield to full. At least Path should feel better now and drop less easily in fights.

• Apex debuts on Nintendo Switch the same day those balance changes drop, March 9th.

• There’s a $50,000 Twitch Rivals event scheduled for next Thursday, March 11th, but you’ll get a reminder about it in next week’s issue as well.

• Riot’s Valorant has announced a LAN event in Iceland, the game’s first international competition. The Apex community is still waiting on the details of the ALGS Championship that will follow the Winter Circuit Playoffs, though its global bracket and large $1 million prize pool suggest a LAN format.

• NiceWigg, the popular streamer who previously played for CLG with Madness and Nokokopuffs, will be playing in this weekend’s Winter Circuit tournament with another old squad of his, Dcop and Solve.

• Xynoa competed in last week’s Winter Circuit tournament, suggesting that Respawn/EA either hasn’t investigated the accusations discussed in last week’s newsletter or doesn’t find them credible. His team also played in a BoomTV event. However, despite qualifying for an Esports Arena Series E sponsorship for its second season, his squad was not selected during last night’s draft—possibly because Xynoa did not pass the “social media scrub” CEO and ESA founder Tyler Endres mentioned on Twitter in a conversation about this player. As you’ll read below, his team is still competing in GLL. We’ll have to see this weekend whether his ALGS squad will remain eligible to compete.

• Redditor LouisLittEsquire watched TSM and Team_F8 (Xynoa’s team) duke it out in Fragment East once again, this time in the weekly GLL tourney. They might do the same in this weekend’s ALGS.

• Snip3down’s dog “Chief”, who suffered a health crisis during TSM’s nailbiting open qualifiers on Saturday, is thankfully okay, and now receiving more medical attention than I’ve gotten my entire adult life.

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What to watch:

Your weekly ALGS tourney, this time with a full production team. Qualifying rounds start Friday, March 5th, and I’ve posted the schedule from Discord below.

Sentinels, TSM, CLG, and NRG all failed to make the top 10 of Winter Circuit #3 and thus did not qualify into the Winter Circuit #4 finals lobby. At the risk of calling out one of these teams in particular, over the six games in the finals, CLG, who won Winter Circuit #2, only managed to net a single point in Winter Circuit #3, with one kill in the fifth game. Watch them run down less-skilled teams on Friday and Saturday or save your Apex strength for the official broadcast on Sunday.

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I’m still working on a longer post about the role of coaches in pro Apex with some nice visualizations, so expect that soon. In the meantime, enjoy all this tournament action!