Hunter C. February 26, 2019
Cloud9 is the latest organization to make a push into Apex Legends.
The esports organization announced the signing of Apex Legends player “PVPX,” a popular content creator on both Twitch and YouTube.
According to his Twitch account, PVPX has been active in Overwatch and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 prior to committing to Apex Legends.
PVPX joins the organization as a content creator and as a competitor, and is the first Apex Legends player signed by Cloud9. There are still no official tournaments for the game yet announced, but an iteration of Twitch Rivals and Guy “Dr. Disrespect” Beahm’s Code Red tournament have already been played in the game.
Both events were won by teams featuring Coby “dizzy” Meadows, one of the first players signed to compete in the game by NRG, along with Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Richard “KingRichard” Nelson.
Apex Legends has been smashing records all across Twitch, and in its first month has proved to be a legitimate threat to the utter dominance of Fortnite in the battle royale genre. However, there are still some steps that need to be taken if the game is going to become truly competitive.
Developer Respawn will need to introduce custom lobbies to the game, as well as solo and duo modes in order for the game to continue gaining traction with competitive gamers. Only so much can be done with public matchmaking.
Players like PVPX will be continue to be signed by organizations while the game is doing big numbers on Twitch, but until there are established competitive rules, a true scoring system, custom lobbies, and a LAN environment in which games can be efficiently run such as in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ NPL, pro players will have to focus on producing content rather than competing.