Apex Legends pro reveals why OpTic dropped their ALGS roster

OpTic Gaming released its professional Apex Legends roster suddenly after a poor showing in the first split of the ALGS and one of the players shed some light on the situation in a live stream.

OpTic Gaming dropped its ALGS team on April 17 in a somewhat shocking move by the organization. The Apex Legends team placed second at the 2023 Championship just under a year ago and were just barely short of the cutoff to play at the 2024 Split 1 Playoffs LAN event.

One of the dropped players, Mark ‘Dropped’ Thees, claimed on social media afterward that the organization was also pulling out of the esport entirely, instead of picking up a Split 1 Playoffs team or picking up new players.

OpTic entered Apex Legends in 2022 by signing Cloud9’s former roster and had four LAN appearances where the team placed in the top 20.

Dropped later explained on a Twitch livestream how his team’s sudden release from the organization went down.

“We didn’t really know anything about it until [April 17] and they basically told us ‘at 5 PM we’re going to be announcing it’ and we were like, ‘Damn, ok’,” Dropped said.

The exit from Apex Esports is also more shocking as OpTic is an ALGS-partnered organization. OpTic, along with 11 other teams, were chosen by EA to receive “a financial stipend in order to help them establish a stable base on which to build their competitive programs,” in 2023.

Dropped explained on stream that he asked Optic about it and that they said it wasn’t enough to keep them in the esport.

Apex Legends esports went through an exodus of organizations in 2023 with NRG Esports and 100 Thieves both leaving the ALGS circuit. However, some teams doubled down on their investment in Apex esports and others have returned to the circuit after years away.

The partnership program was supposed to be a step in the right direction for the league, especially since the esport has lost orgs before when lowballing its offer for financial compensation from ALGS team-branded in-game monetization.

Apex OpTic Gaming has yet to confirm or deny if it still has plans to be in Apex Legends. The esports and gaming brand, however, has been scaling back its esports investments and mostly holding onto its main title, Call of Duty.

EA and the ALGS have yet to comment on the organization’s status as a partnered team in the circuit.