On March 1st, 2020, it was announced that the Apex tournament series will be revived with Apex 2020. Per the announcement, the event series is under new management, and is being produced in collaboration with House of 3000, Master Hand Gaming and the team behind the Collision tournament series.
It is currently unknown which Super Smash Bros. titles will be featured at the tournament. Only two things have been revealed so far: the three organizations involved and its status as part of VGBC’s Smash World Tour.
We are back and under new management!
— Apex 2022 (@apex_series) March 1, 2020
We are proud to be collaborating with @HouseOf3000, @CollisionSeries, @MasterHandGames, and the Tri-state community to bring you #Apex2020 Nov. 20th - 22nd!
Stay tuned for more info in the upcoming months!
#SmashWorldTour pic.twitter.com/qMrkHrLpxR
The original Apex tournament series ran from 2010 to 2015, organized by Team Apex and helmed by Jonathan “Alex Strife” Lugo. While the series’ 2015 entry was one of the largest Smash tournaments of its time, two major controversies surrounded the event.
Ten days before the event, a post was made on Facebook and shared to Reddit detailing Alex Strife’s continuous pattern of sexual misconduct, with the revelation that he had sexually harassed and assaulted multiple women in the Smash community, a good number of whom were underage at the time.
Later the same day, other community members, including CLASH Tournaments owner Christina “Chia” Korsak would come forward with information about Alex Strife’s other unprofessional conduct. This ranged from using a U-Haul truck to transport Japanese players back and forth between their hotel and the Apex 2010 venue, to repeatedly and abruptly announcing that he was quitting Team Apex, only to rejoin shortly afterwards.
In 2016, an attempt was made to revive the tournament series. This new iteration was helmed by Bifuteki, one of the Tristate area’s main fighting game crews. To avoid conflicting with Genesis 3, the event was held in June. The event would end up having much lower attendance than past years, due to a combination of the Apex name’s associations with Alex Strife’s behavior, and due to its close proximity to CEO 2016, which was scheduled for the following week.
Currently it is unknown who comprises the new management—whether it simply consists of leadership from House of 3000, Master Hand Gaming and Collision, or if it’s a separate team entirely. It can be assumed that very little, if any of the original Team Apex is involved in the event, nor is the Bifuteki crew.
While the new management will hopefully do better than those who came before them, some—including Chia—have voiced concerns about the decision to use the Apex name, as its associations with Alex Strife still weigh heavily on the minds of his victims.
As it currently stands, we can only hope that the new management has those past associations in mind, and that they will do better than those who came before them.
