- EA cancels Apex Legends Global Series LAV event
- The reason cited is the rising concerns over the Omicron variant
- The tournament will be held solely online
The new Omicron variant of COVID-19 forces EA to, unfortunately, cancel the ALGS LAN in favor of a purely online tournament.
ALGS LAN Cancelled
Apex Legends Global Series should have had the conclusion to its first split on a live tournament, but unfortunately, the event has been moved online due to concerns over the new COVID variant. Many players hoped that the $1 million tournament will be held LAN in early 2022. However, in a statement posted by Respawn, they announced that the event would be played solely online.
“Today we’ve made the difficult decision to move the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs to an online regional competition format. We sincerely apologize for the late-breaking nature of this news.”, it reads.
This marks the second year in a row that Apex has not had a proper in-person competition. The last one was the $500 000 Preseason Invitational in Krakow, Poland. Unfortunately, 2020 came around with the first wave of the COVID pandemic, which wreaked havoc on the first year of ALGS play, forcing all tournaments to be played solely online, and effectively eliminating international competition.
Apex and Other Esports
Some organizers have started making tentative steps towards opening up esports events again, like the burgeoning Halo Infinite esports scene, which is seeing many new organizations like XSET forming rosters. There is a LAN planned for Raleigh, North Carolina, in December. Additionally, Berlin is hosting Valorant‘s Champions currently.
Apex LAN tournaments are a bit more challenging. It is more difficult to organize the twenty-team battle royal format the game has. This is in stark contrast to Valorant’s five-player teams. EA thinks the whole deal is too risky, saying “a global in-person January event with players traveling from as many as 40 countries is not possible.”
The $1,000,000 Playoffs purse will be divided into five regional competitions, each featuring the top twenty teams of the regular season. This is quite different from the expected format. At first only each region’s top ten teams were slated to make the cut for Playoffs. There an international group would fight for the lion’s share of the $1,000,000 prize. Dividing the prize pool into five means that a lot less money will be up for grabs in the regional playoffs.
Apex has been one of EA’s greatest money earners this year, with the company scoring its second strongest quarter thanks to the game. It is unclear how fans will react to the newly changed format of the tournament.
