The Apex Legends Global Series, which was meant to be the game’s first big professional esports tournament, has, like many other major events, been significantly impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While the next live event has been postponed, online tournaments will still be held as planned. However, Respawn will now be offering competitors prize money in the next online tournament, seemingly to make up for the postponement.
Upcoming Apex Legends Global Series Events
Respawn Entertainment recently announced that the first Premier Event of the Apex Legends Global Series, which was due to take place in Paris, will be postponed. The studio, understandably, has yet to announce any plans to reschedule. In the meanwhile, Online Tournaments #2 and #3 will still take place as scheduled, although there will be a few changes. The 10 Online Tournaments, which take place throughout the Global Series, are a chance for players to qualify for major live events and win the money to pay for the travel expenses they’ll incur travelling to those events. The tournaments don’t actually have their own prize pools though, unlike the other big events.
Because Premier Event #1 is now postponed, players will no longer be able to qualify for it in the Online Tournaments. Instead, Online Tournament #2 will feature players competing for ALGS points. Respawn will use these to determine tournament seeding and also open slots for upcoming Major tournament events. However, Respawn has also decided to offer actual prize money at this event too, drawn from the postponed Premier Event’s prize pool and then upped to $300,000! The following prizes will be available for winning competitors:
- 1st Place: $21,600
- 2nd Place: $13,500
- 3rd Place: $8,400
- 4th Place: $6,000
- 5th Place: $4,200
- 7th Place: $3,600
- 8th Place: $3,000
- 9th Place: $2,400
- 10th Place: $1,800
Registration for the following Online Tournament will open at 10:00 AM PDT on the 24th of March. Registration will then close on the 2nd of April, one week later. For now, Premier Event #2, scheduled to take place in Bucharest on the 30th-31st of May, is still taking place. However, this is likely to be completely dependent on the state of the coronavirus pandemic over the next few weeks. If the situation doesn’t improve, or indeed, if it worsens, fans should expect a postponement for that event as well. Respawn wrote in their latest update that they had; “plans to increase the number of online tournaments with prize money,” indicating that they may be anticipating the eventual cancellation or postponement of more live events.