Apex Legends Is Finally Filling Its Barren Winter Period

If you’re a fan of Apex Legends esports, you’re probably well aware of the barren winter period. This length of time after the Split 2 Playoffs but before the ALGS Championship has barely any tournaments, creating an unfortunate lull in competition as excitement should be ramping up to fever pitch for the biggest event of the competitive Apex calendar. This year, however, the ALGS has a plan to change that.

Normally, the ALGS competitive rotation looks like this: league tournament, LAN, league tournament, LAN, gap, Champs, gap. The latter gap is a rest period, like the summer for footballers in seasons when there aren’t any Euros, Copa Americas, Asia Cups, or World Cups. But the gap between Split 2 Playoffs (the second LAN in that list) and the ALGS Championship is bare. Barren. Bereft.

In its fourth year of competition, this gap is finally being filled. And who better to fill it than Jack ‘NiceWigg’ Martin and Athanasios ‘Greek’ Alestas, the official B-streamers who travel across the world to bring you energising, expletive-filled commentary on all the Apex action?

The new tournament, helmed by the most iconic duo in Apex, is appropriately called the BLGS, and brings an open competition with a $400,000 prize pool, which isn’t to be sniffed at. Anyone can enter the five weekends of tournaments – yes, that includes you! – for a slice of that 400k pie.

The ALGS is finally heading to Japan in January 2025, a country with an immense passion for the game. From players like Yuji ‘YUKIO’ Okano, to hordes of fans who cross the world to support their compatriots in competition, the Japanese contingent at any Apex Legends LAN is always among the loudest. Whether the ravenous crowd will give the home teams that much-needed buff to lift the country’s first LAN trophy remains to be seen, but the tournament will be electric either way.

While Reject is a Japanese organisation, Split 1 Playoffs winner Reject Winnity is a South Korean team with all South Korean players.

However, this tournament needs the buildup. Much like how the knockout stages of the FIFA World Cup need the group stages so that everybody can acclimatise to this year’s tournament, Apex LANs need a few weeks of smaller-stakes competitions to get fans back in the zone. We might need to get to grips with a new meta, we might have had more roster swaps, or we might even need to be keeping our eyes on a team that’s shot up through the Last Chance Qualifier to become a serious threat.

But this isn’t just any competition in the leadup to LAN – it’s a competition for fans to compete in. Sure, many of us are hardstuck Gold players (and I count myself among you these days), but lots of ALGS fans are seriously good at the game, too. Not esports-ready good, but good enough to win some cash in an open competition.

There’s no better way to get the community excited about the ALGS Championship than to give its members a chance to compete. Not in the big one, but in reasonably prized cash cups led by icons of the community. Likewise, it brings the disparate parts of the video game Apex Legends and the esport Apex Legends closer together. For me, watching tournaments always leaves me itching to play the battle royale, but for many I’m sure there’s a disconnect. You can’t play ranked like it’s the ALGS – your random teammates don’t understand what a rotation is, for starters, and try explaining to them why it’s important to play Crypto and hit beacon regularly.

The BLGS is the perfect idea to bridge the gap between LANs, and bridge the gap between game and esport. And nobody will execute it better than NiceWigg and Greek themselves. The emptiness before the ALGS Championships never made sense, and filling it with community-focused tournaments is a brilliant idea. Now the only thing left to do is work out where you’re dropping.

Exclusive: Behind The Scenes Look At The ALGS Championship

TheGamer was granted unprecedented access to see exactly how a $2 million esports event gets made at the ALGS Championship