In the month since its release, Apex Legends has become one of the most popular games in the world—and its esports scene is already growing.
In one of the first steps by a major organization, Team Liquid has moved its Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Blackout team to Apex Legends, according to Brenden “Casper” Marino, a player on the new Apex team.
Casper, who joined Liquid’s Blackout team alongside Gage “Caliburn” Meyer, Thomas “Flankxr” Cook, and Tanner “Rogue” Trebb in December, will be moving on from CoD’s first battle royale mode, which released with the full multiplayer game on Oct. 12, 2018. And despite Apex only featuring three-person teams, Casper confirmed that none of the four Liquid players will be getting released because Liquid is looking to add even more Apex players.
Like other battle royale modes, Blackout started off hot, with streamers and other organizations also jumping in the hopes of kickstarting the esports scene. Despite this, Apex Legends has solidly overtaken it in popularity in just one month.
Related: Apex Legends surpasses 50 million downloads
Apex’s sudden popularity, and the likely surge of esports organizations coming into the scene in the future, causes many to liken it to Fortnite in 2018. Fortnite had nearly every major organization throw resources into the game despite having limited esports capabilities at the time, and even now, the game struggles with competitive play features.
Hopefully, despite the clamoring from competitive battle royale players, Apex Legends does not rush into esports without proper preparation. Respawn has definitely seen the mistakes Epic Games and Bluehole have made in regards to professional play, so it should be cautious with its immensely-popular game.
Published: Mar 6, 2019 05:41 pm