Following Mass Shootings, ABC and ESPN Won’t Air the Apex Invitational
Originally intended to be aired on television with ABC and ESPN2 and ESPNEWS on Sunday, August 11th but since the recent mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, the broadcast companies changed their mind. Now ABC will be rerunning “E:60 – Forever Broncos” in the time slot previous reserves for the XGames Apex Legends EXP Invitational which will now only stream through ESPN’s digital channels. Rod Breslau quickly broke the sad news for Apex fans on Twitter which was later reported on by Bloomberg.
It’s too bad for Apex Legends as every time it gains momentum, something like this seems to happen to slow them down. Through all of the drawbacks, EA still expect Respawn Entertainment to keep Apex Legends playable for the next decade. Despite these networks backing out of video game content and companies like Wal Mart no longer promoting violent video games, we can’t help but think the problem will persist as the issue isn’t actually being addressed. It doesn’t help that Donald Trump plays a role in deflecting the blame from mental health to video games. Given the short notice and how quickly the Apex Legends invitational was replaced, it’ll be interesting to see how other gaming tournaments will be affected moving forward.
It isn’t all bad news for Apex Legends and XGames however, as ESPN still intends to stream the invitational tournament on their app available on iOS and Android. With season two recently releasing and the upcoming August 13th-27th solo mode, it’s sad to see something beyond their control hinder their momentum.
Were you looking forward to watching the XGames Apex Legends EXP Invitational on TV or were you going to watch it digitally anyway? What do you think about video games being blamed for America’s mass shooting increase? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Dualshockers