The most prestigious tournament of Apex Legends, ALGS, shared some sad news. The second stage of the tournament, the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs, will be played online as a precaution. At this stage, professional players will not be able to participate in the LAN tournaments that they have been yearning for.
Because of the new coronavirus variant, Omicron, countries are on alert again. Nivera and Victor also tested positive in the VALORANT Champions, which is played in LAN format. Therefore, ALGS management has already taken the measure. Because they do not want to experience a similar situation.
The statement made by ALGS management on Electronic Arts’ official website is as follows:
“Our priorty is protecting our attendees.”
Hello ALGS fans,
Today we’ve made the difficult decision to move the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs to an online regional competition format. We sincerely apologize for the late-breaking nature of this news.
Our priority is protecting our competitors, employees, tournament partner staff, and communities. As we continue to monitor the Covid-19 Omicron variant, review the continuously changing country-by-country travel restrictions, and digest the direction given to us by health officials (including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO)), we’ve concluded a global in-person January event with players traveling from as many as 40 countries is not possible.
The Split 1 Playoffs will now feature five separate online tournaments, with the top 20 teams from the Split 1 Regular Season in each region competing in a Match Point series. The $1M USD Split 1 Playoffs prize pool is now divided across the five regional events.
We’ll continue to keep our fans as updated as possible and will provide more ALGS competitive event information when appropriate. We want to reiterate that should conditions allow, we intend to return to LAN competition this May for the ALGS Split 2 Playoffs.
Respawn Entertainment
The news has upset fans as well as the players. Various esport athletes shared their views on social media. Overall, many of them shared that they were disappointed. However, almost everyone agrees that this ultimate decision is correct because nothing is more important than wellbeing. Also, the casters and players never experienced the LAN format. So they won’t struggle with the process of online formats.
ALGS Has Not Played in LAN Format Yet
When ALGS started, the coronavirus was only affecting Wuhan. That’s why no one thought the tournament would be entirely online. But when the disease became a global threat, even the stages planned as LAN became online. So we didn’t get the opportunity to watch the game’s most prestigious tournament in LAN format. We hope the Omicron variant does not affect us that much, and in May 2022, we can watch the players competing to be the champions of ALGS in an esports center.
