When Apex Legends burst onto the scene in 2019, few might have realized how massive the game would become in two years’ time. With the introduction of Apex Legends' Ranked Leagues, millions of players tried to grind out matches, racking up as many wins as they could in order to call themselves an Apex Predator. With the boom in popularity for Respawn Entertainment and EA’s battle royale, the duo announced the Apex Legends Global Series, the official competitive esport for the game.
Although the Apex Legends Global Series, ALGS for short, was announced toward the end of 2019, the plans for 2020 were cut short. The expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic forced EA to cancel live events starting in March. Going forward, the ALGS had to adapt to an online lifestyle, creating multiple online tournaments with a Summer and Autumn Circuit in 2020. What followed were competitions that refined the skills of the pros and helped give some grassroots opportunities for those that wanted a chance to win prizes. Now up? The ALGS Winter Circuit.
Apex Legends Global Series Winter Circuit Overview
The ALGS Winter Circuit begins with a series of online tournaments powered by Battlefy. From January to March 2021, five online tournaments will determine which teams are able to advance to the official playoffs for each region. In turn, the winners of each region’s playoffs will advance to the first Apex Legends Global Series Championship for a chance at the $1 million prize pool.
Teams are able to enter into the five ALGS regions of North America, South America, APAC North (Korea and Japan), APAC South (Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand), and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). While the Middle East and Africa teams will compete in their own online tournaments, regional winners will be included with Europe. All regions will be playing on Apex Legend’s Season 7, with the World’s Edge map. So while competitors will be able to use Horizon, they will not be able to use the newest Legend introduced in Season 8, Fuse.
ALGS Point System and Winter Prizes
While every team playing in the Winter Circuit will want to be the Champion of each match, the way winners are determined will be based on a specific point system. Due to the nature of Apex Legends as a battle royale, winners aren’t always as clear cut as the esports matches of Valorant, for example, where there is a single winning team and a single losing team for each match. AGLS Points are awarded based on two factors: a team’s placement in each match, and how many kills a player gets.
For each kill a player gets, they are awarded one point. When it comes to placement in a match, the point distribution is as follows:
- 1st Place = 12 points
- 2nd Place = 9 point
- 3rd Place = 7 point
- 4th Place = 5 points
- 5th Place = 4 points
- 6th - 7th Place = 3 points
- 8th - 10th Place = 2 points
- 11th - 15th Place = 1 point
- 16th - 20th Place = 0 points
EA has developed this competitive point system in order to make matches more exciting, and ultimately fair. Only taking into account the winner of each match could lead to boring matches for viewers, as teams camp their chosen spots, take less risks, and possibly not even get kills. Directly incorporating the kill points into ranking helps incentivize teams to work harder, and ultimately creates more intriguing esports events overall.
The ALGS Winter Circuit has a total prize pool of $750,000. For online tournaments, prizes are awarded after aggregating a team’s total points. In North America and Europe, the prize for 1st Place is $6000, 2nd Place gets $3000, 3rd Place gets $1500, 4th and 5th Place get $1000, and 6th through 10th Place get $750. Other regions award slightly different amounts, and APAC North and South only awards prizes through 5th Place, while South America and the Middle East/Africa regions only award through 3rd Place.
While teams can compete in multiple online tournaments, they can only win prize money in one. The prize pool skyrockets once players get to the Winter Circuit Playoffs, as $503,000 of the $750,000 is set aside for the playoffs on its own. The top team in each APAC region gets $30,000 and the top team in South America gets $18,000. For North America and EMEA, the top five playoff awards are divided as:
- 1st Place = $48,000
- 2nd Place = $24,000
- 3rd Place = $15,900
- 4th Place = $10,800
- 5th Place = $7,860
- Then prizes decrease from 6th Place onward.
ALGS Winter Circuit Schedule and How To Watch
For the Winter Circuit, all broadcasts will occur on specific Sundays from January to March. While each region will compete at slightly different times, the schedule is down below.
- Winter Circuit Online Tournament #1 (WC OT) aired on January 31, 2021.
- WC OT #2 aired on February 21, 2021.
- WC OT #3 aired on February 28, 2021.
- WC OT #4 will air on March 7, 2021.
- WC Last Chance Qualifier will take place, but not air, on March 21, 2021.
- The Winter Circuit Playoffs will air on March 27 and 28, 2021.
Each public tournament and the playoffs will air on Twitch and YouTube. Though fans can watch each match on the official Apex Legends accounts, there are multiple co-casters who will be broadcasting on their own streams.
There are still two tournaments that will take place before the Winter Circuit comes to a fiery conclusion at the end of March, but there are already several teams that have secured their spots for their region’s playoffs. For example, the current North American teams set to attend the Winter Circuit Playoffs are Team Liquid, SolaFide, MouseandKeyboard, Counter Logic Gaming, NRG, South State, YouLikeThatMate?, and Ranked Is Harder. It will be quite interesting to see which teams not only compete at the Winter Circuit Playoffs, but which teams are able to advance to the Championship. Fans will be waiting with bated breath to see which teams can become the true Apex Predators.
The Apex Legends Global Series Winter Circuit is ongoing.