ALGS Commissioner John Nelson “Considered A Lot Of Different Options” For Championship COVID Protocols

thegamer.com:

Apex Legends esports has returned to LAN. APAC South ruled supreme, with Reignite winning the Split 2 Playoffs and the same roster under a new name – DarkZero – claiming the Championship title, too. The Aussies also brought the superior support to the Championship, with the Burger Brigade quickly cementing itself as an iconic part of Apex esports folklore.

However, not everything went smoothly. Many teams were forced to play with substitutes due to the ALGS’ strict COVID-19 protocols, and some teams were forced to play as Duos after their substitutes were forced to isolate, too. This came after Visa troubles that saw many players, even entire teams, unable to enter America to play in the Championship in Raleigh, North Carolina. I caught up with ALGS commissioner John Nelson to get his perspective on the events, from the excitement of the final to the hurdles they had to jump to get there.

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Ben Sledge, TheGamer: Hi John, how do you feel the LANs went?

John Nelson: It was so great to get back to LAN with Stockholm. I think everybody in the community was carrying around this ‘950-odd days since we'd been together at the Preseason Invitational in Poland.’ And for a lot of people, myself included, it felt longer than that. So to get back to LAN, to have all the players in the room together on that amazing stage, was really a great feeling. And to see the response of the community around the world – we had 539,000 AMA for the finals of Sweden. To see Reignite win and the excitement around that, especially from the APAC South and Australian esports community was really cool.

And then we transitioned to Raleigh which was obviously a lot different because we