Our journalist looks at the recent Apex eSports tournament and what it has given to the world of eSports.
The Apex Legends Global Series (shortly ALGS) Championship has ended this year with a blaster of a final. The ALGS Championship is arguably one of the biggest eSports tournaments around, with a $3 million dollar prize pool. This amount was gathered by EA via crowdfunding. The tournament took place online due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For people who never heard of this video game, let me sum it up. According to newzoo.com Apex Legends is the 7th most played PC game globally. Apex is a free online battle royale game, which recently reached over 100 million unique players worldwide. Set in a futuristic environment with different trait-based characters, the game offers a more fantastical approach to other Battle Royale games like Call of Duty: Warzone.
Players across the world could compete against each other in 5 different leagues: North America, South America, EMEA (Europe), APAC North (Japan & South Korea), and APAC South (Southeast Asia & Oceania). After the qualification phase each league had 20 teams containing 3 players playing 9 rounds of battle royale games against each other in the finals. The teams playing the most consistently, reaching the best spots, and eliminating the most enemies reached the most points, which meant winning the tournament.
The two leagues that have been followed the most during this tournament via streaming through Twitch.tv were North America and EMEA (Europe). In the north American League, the following teams have won the top 4 prizes:
1. Kungarna NA (Vein, scuwry, Onmuu) - $265.591
2. Cloud9 (StayNaughty, Zachmazer, Knoqd) – $132.875
3. TSM (ImperialHal, Reps, Snip3down) - $78.208
4. Renegades (Sauceror, PowPow, bowswer) - $46.767
In the EMEA, the top 4 were:
1. SCARZ Europe (Mande, Taisheen, rpr) - $265.591
2. Fire Beavers (9impulse, Sunset, taskmast33r) - $132.875
3. soloQgoats (diffq, ShivFPS, Zipeth) - $78.208
4. UNDERRATED (KSWINNIE, Dazoh, Horizxon) – $46.767
The MVPs in these leagues were Zach Mazer from the USA, Taisheen from Germany, and Sunset from Russia. Taisheen and Sunset managed to eliminate the same number of enemies in the EMEA, thus have split the prize of MVPs between each other.
It is important to remember that this prize money was crowdsourced from fans of eSports tournaments, owing to the exploding popularity of video game-based sporting events, especially with the growth of streaming platforms like Twitch. As large video game publishers like EA take advantage of the growth in eSport competitions, it is clear to see that video games have long passed the days of being a simple hobby.