Just over six months after the release of Apex Legends, a pro tournament for the game has been announced.
Apex Legends’ developer, Respawn Games, and the game’s publisher, Electronic Arts, announced today a series of esports events for the game later this year, including a professional tournament with a $500,000 prize pool on September 13-15. The event will be called "The Preseason Invitational" and will take place in Krakow, Poland. At the event, 240 players divided into 80 teams will compete in a double-elimination format tournament for the invitational.
Apex Legends, for those who somehow haven't played the game, is a first-person battle royale game set in the sci-fi universe of Respawn's Titanfall. The game puts an interesting spin on the battle royale formula by grouping players into three-person teams, introducing hero shooter-style characters with special abilities, and the implementation of a useful ping system for marking loot or enemies without needing voice chat. Though Apex: Legends takes place in the same universe as Titanfall, there are no mechs in the game for players to pilot. The game also limits mobility for most of the characters, compared to other Respawn games, to more closely match the pace of the battle royale genre.
In addition to the Preseason Invitational, Apex Legends will be played at this year's X Games hosted by ESPN in Minneapolis, MN in August. A win at the X Games won’t be as lucrative as at The Preseason Invitational with a $150,000 prize pool compared to $500,000 but winners at the X Games take home medals. The X Games will also host a professional versus amateur tournament, called the EXP Pro-Am, for charity with a $25,000 charity prize pool.
The news of the esports competitions comes on the heels of the release of the second season of Apex Legends, which brought the addition of a new character and major changes to the map. For a battle royale style game like Apex Legends, these types of updates are fairly standard, but the cadence of launch, to seasons, to professional esports events with Apex Legends seems accelerated.