Split One of the Apex Legends Global Series is reaching its climax with LAN Playoffs on the horizon featuring 40 teams from all four major regions. However, the slow communication speed from EA about official LAN invites could end multiple teams’ splits before the tournament even starts.
Kiryl “9impulse” Kostsiu, team captain for Aurora Gaming, posted a request for EA to send out official invites to the LAN location for the upcoming Split One Playoffs so his team can start applying for travel visas to the event. Currently, 9impulse and Aurora comfortably sit in first place on the EMEA leaderboard and are almost guaranteed a spot at LAN, but without an approved travel visa, the entire team faces the possibility of dropping out of the event altogether.
Leading into any LAN tournament, it is common for the organizers to send out invites to the participating players and teams, giving them a valid application reason for their travels, as multiple countries need official documentation from the organizers to begin the visa process. However, 9impulse has repeatedly called out EA’s late response time in sending out these crucial invites, and directly suffered the most out of any pro in the 2023 ALGS season.
The 2023 Split One Playoffs were held in London, U.K., but was subject to the worst visa issues in ALGS history as players and teams from multiple regions announced their withdrawal from the tournament due to denied visas, or late approvals after the tournament. 9impulse’s team Fire Beavers was a favorite to win that entire tournament with the highest damage and kills in EMEA, but announced their inability to make it to LAN due to the visa application process.
9impulse’s post showed the public how long the general visa process could take, with the entire process taking weeks for some applicants. The original Aurora Gaming roster received no response for their travel visa status for last year’s Split One Playoffs, and APAC South’s DEWA United only received their visas one day before the tournament began, bringing further criticism to EA’s unwillingness to send LAN invites earlier.
Despite the outcries for an earlier announcement date and invite process from EA, no major change would be made as the issues continued all season. Despite successfully making it to the Split Two Playoffs, 9impulse, the newly signed Aurora Gaming roster, and many other teams would once again face late visas for the Championship, leading to last-minute substitutions as players scrambled to travel once they received their visas, potentially missing one or even two days of the four-day event. In fact, since ALGS returned to LAN in 2022, there hasn’t been a single in-person tournament where at least one team wasn’t affected by visa issues denying them entry to the country where the tournament was being held.
With the expected 2024 Split One Playoffs date to be in April, 9impulse’s call for action from EA is more important than ever to allow all players and organizations to start their visa applications and sort out any problems that may occur during the process.
Multiple pros and teams have spoken up in solidarity with 9impulse about the current invite situation, and the possibility of missing LAN. EMEA’s third place team o7 could lose two members due to the lack of an official invite and communication from EA, and fifth place Alliance is no stranger to playing LANs without Miron “Effect” Novikov due to late visa approvals.
Split One will end on March 17 in all regions to decide the 40 teams attending the Split One Playoffs, but if EA and Respawn continue to hold off on the LAN invites, history will continue to repeat itself with multiple missing teams at what should be one of the biggest events of the competitive year.
