A $50,000 Twitch Rivals Apex Legends tournament scheduled for tomorrow has been delayed to Thursday, Oct. 7.
The delay comes during a chaotic week for Apex. Despite the release of a patch on Monday, Sept. 20 meant to address problems, lag, bugs, and crashes have continued for many players. The issues affect private lobbies as well, potentially imperiling the smooth operation of tournaments like the Twitch Rivals event originally scheduled for tomorrow.
The tournament will be played on Thursday, Oct. 7 in a new format meant to address some of the complaints about Twitch Rivals events in the past, where technicalities in the rules allowed teams of pros to dominate while new and inexperienced Apex players struggled to compete.
Previous Twitch Rivals events used a draft format, which contributed in part to the problem of uneven teams. The tournament planned for Thursday, Oct. 7 will feature stronger restrictions on team composition: There can only be one current or former professional Apex player signed to each team and only one player per team can have been a finalist in any pro circuit event. Teams will be comprised of one professional Apex player, one Apex content creator, and one variety streamer.
Previous Twitch Rivals Apex events have used similar guidelines in an attempt to achieve parity in its tournament lobbies. But the imprecise distinctions between professionals and skilled content creators, the draft format, and the lure of a hefty prize pool led to some wildly unbalanced teams in the past.
For the event now scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 7, tournament staff will go a step further and “vet the teams to ensure competitive integrity.”
