HisWattson’s Apex Legends mods rival official LTMs, but EA won’t let him monetize tournaments

Apex Legends has slowly added additional official game modes with each season and event, including Arenas, Control, Shadow Royale, and other limited time playlists, but the community has always rallied for more. Private lobbies recently released to the public with the Spellbound Collection Event, but with heavy limitations on starting a lobby.

HisWattson, professional player for FURIA Esports in the ALGS, has been heavily involved in the community modding scene and worked on bringing custom game modes and tournaments to the public to garner attention and support. Working with modders like CafeFps, AeonFMC and VoxMode, the team has pushed for greater notoriety within the Apex modding scene, with past work including Cafe’s Flowstate Aim Trainer. 

However, an update from HisWattson’s twitter account brings bad news for the development team and community, as all future tournaments using R5 Reloaded will be sponsorless and have no prize pool.

R5 Reloaded, a custom version of Apex, allows for players to create their own maps, modes and private lobbies with unlimited creativity, leading to recreations of fan-favorite playlists from other shooters. Examples include Free-For-All on Call of Duty’s Shipment, and Team Deathmatch on Overflow.

On Dec. 22, 2022, HisWattson first teased a Prop Hunt game mode, with a later announcement on Jan 12. 2023 that the game mode officially finished production. On Jan. 21, a Duck Hunt game mode was teased, drawing inspiration from Halo 3 Forge maps, with a competition going down today.

Both competitions were set to be streamed on HisWattson’s Twitch channel, with a $1,000 prize pool for each game mode. However, with the recent announcement, Electronic Arts may be paying closer attention to the modding community and acting to protect their product. R5 Reloaded runs on an offline version of Apex Legends, with no official statement from Respawn Entertainment on the use of these community servers or the future of HisWattson’s tournaments.

HisWattson ranks as the fifth most watched Apex Legends streamer on Twitch, bringing wider attention to the game and the modding community with his recent content collaborations and sometimes garnering more attention than official LTMs like Hardcore Royale, which has been met with a mixed reception. EA has been protective of Apex and who can monetize tournaments, referring to their Community Tournament Guidelines as terms of service that all tournaments must abide by.

With the ruling on HisWattson’s modded game mode tournaments, EA now sets a precedent for all future competitions that run on R5 Reloaded and other unofficial Apex servers.