In the battle royale shooter Apex Legends, tensions are high: For the first time in two and a half years of pandemic pause, a major tournament is taking place on-site: The Apex Legends Global Series begins today, on April 29, 2022, in Stockholm, Sweden. There is a prize pool of one million US dollars. However, the professionals will have to play on weak PCs, which they consider ‘outdated’.
What kind of tournament is this?
- It’s the “Apex Legends Global Series: Split 2 Playoffs.” The tournament starts today, April 29, in Stockholm, Sweden, and ends on May 1.
- Forty teams will participate in the tournament. They will start in 4 groups of 10 teams each. The grand finale is scheduled for May 1.
- The winner receives $250,000 in prize money, while the remaining $750,000 is distributed among the other participants. The teams placed 31 to 40 will each receive $4,500.
Professionals play the tournament on weaker PCs than they are used to
What is the problem? The tournament is to be played on PCs using an RTX 2070 graphics card. The graphics card is about four years old. The professionals see the PCs provided by EA as an ‘outdated’ setup that will struggle to render Apex Legends in e-sport quality.
Because a lot is happening in Apex Legends: many effects fly across the screen, especially when the action at the end of a match concentrates on a small circle. And in the tournament, it will be determined in this circle who takes home the $250,000. According to the professionals, the tournament PCs should be able to represent this well and smoothly.
Therefore, the professionals train and play at home on better PCs and must then, when it counts, settle for this weak hardware. From their perspective, this is a problem.
Can EA do anything about it? Yes, they wanted to as well. Meanwhile, EA had assured to switch to ‘high-end PCs’.
On April 21, an EA employee stated that new computers with RTX 3080 graphics cards and modern Intel processors would be delivered to Stockholm, which received praise from the community.
However, this ultimately did not work. In a last-minute change, the professionals now have to use the cheaper PCs.
The players are particularly pessimistic, claiming that when the character Gibraltar uses his ultimate ability, the FPS will surely drop to an unbearable 50 FPS, even if they lower the settings completely.
The professionals seem to be disappointed and describe it as “more than pathetic.”
What’s behind this: Due to the global shortage of semiconductor chips, high-quality modern gaming hardware is difficult to obtain. For the tournament in Stockholm, it is not enough to just bring one or two gaming PCs.
This task seems to be unsolvable even for Electronic Arts, especially since it is crucial in such tournaments that everyone plays on exactly the same PCs to have the same conditions.
EA cannot simply fly “any gaming PCs” to Stockholm.
Apex Legends is still a huge game in 2022 according to MeinMMO author Jürgen Stöffel:
3 years after release, Apex Legends is still the best battle royale in 2022.
