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Apex Legends pro Sweetdreams will not compete this season because it is no longer financially viable for him. The former IGL for Luminosity Gaming announced he’s stepping away from the scene indefinitely.
On Feb. 22, Sweetdreams announced his hiatus from Year 5 of the Apex Legend Global Series through a post on his Discord. The player, who has been in the ALGS since its inception in 2020, said he was deliberating being a part of three different rosters but ultimately decided to step away from the scene due to the financial concerns and uncertainties surrounding the future of the scene.
Sweetdreams noted he will take a “potentially temporary backseat” to see how the ALGS scene plays out in the coming months when the first split of the Pro League season begins on April 6.
The now-former pro player said that the ALGS Partnership Program, which subsidizes part of a player’s salary, was removed and that ALGS Year 6 will be canceled, but he did not include how he got the information.
“This [news] created a situation in which pay and org support was declining, the commitment to continue the Esport was abandoned, and a bunch of other behind-the-scenes stuff that I can’t speak about,” Sweetdreams said in the Discord post.
Hakis, an Apex player for esports organization Alliance, contested the rumors, saying that he spoke to multiple people who said Sweetdreams was wrong. “Maybe Sweet’s been misinformed, but I have no clue,” Hakis said on his stream.
Rumors of the ALGS Partnership Program being terminated floated around social media platforms prior to Sweetdreams’ announcement. Leaker YOROTSUKI said on Feb. 19 that EA or Respawn had terminated the program but also noted it was just a rumor.
In response to Sweetdreams’ hiatus, former Apex coach for TSM Raven said on his stream that the game is dying, adding that EA, which owns Apex, does not care too much about esports and uses it as a way to advertise for its games.
Other players, including ImperialHal, have been vocal on many occasions about the decline.
According to the Steam Charts, Apex’s player count through Steam has been on a slow decline since roughly April 2024, with occasional upticks in player growth. In January, the game’s player count was the lowest it’s been since early 2021 at 153,693 peak players.
Alongside the game’s decline, many esports organizations involved in Apex have slowly stepped away from the scene. While some have returned, others, such as DarkZero, FaZe Clan, and OpTic Gaming, have not. Since this year’s first split has not begun, it’s unclear if the scene will see more organizations leave, stay, or join.
Some suggest the decline has been because of the ongoing cheater problem, which has risen to the level of pro players getting their accounts taken over by hackers, sometimes even in the middle of pro league match.
As more pro players accounts got hacked, people such as the AntiCheatPD advised players from playing the game to protect their accounts from having cheats injected into their PCs and ransomware getting installed.
Another notable figure in the Apex scene, HisWattson, announced in December that he will no longer be playing the game as much, if at all, moving forward. After stepping away from the pro scene in 2023, the now full-time content creator said that the game is “dying” because it flips between catering to competitive and casual players instead of sticking to one.
For those worried about Sweetdreams stepping away from streaming, the player said in his Discord post that he will come back to regularly streaming ranked in Apex while also broadening the scope of his streams to newer content.
“I know this will come as a shock to some and some may be sad, but just know I fully intend on making an impact this year but just need to explore some other options,” he said in the post.
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