Apex Legends Community Calls For More Opportunities for Marginalized Genders

A new tournament from popular streamer NICKMERCS is receiving flack for holding a community event with only two women invited to compete.

The Apex Legends community is up in arms after the MFAM Gauntlet announced its competitors, which only included two female players.

The MFAM Gauntlet is an Apex Legends event organized by popular streamer Nicholas “NICKMERCS” Kolcheff. The community event on March 31 had organizers select captains for each team. Then those captains would pick two more players to compete in their trio. But this ultimately resulted in only two women competing in the tournament, Laurice “GuhRL” Habibi and ClaraAtWork.

The lack of non-male competitors started to get attention on Twitter thanks to streamer lightyrs.

huge apex tourney with only two women ? hmmm pic.twitter.com/YnF1Iq7OfZ

— light (@lightlyrs) March 31, 2023

After the competitive Apex Legends player pointed out the lack of diversity, other female streamers started to lash out at NICKMERCS.

Some content creators tried to point out that there are not that many female Apex Legends pros at the same level as male players. Spire’s head coach Patrick “hundredz” Kwon even stated that female players need to “prove you can hang with the big dogs” and “stop holding themselves back” if they want to get picked.

I truly wish for women to have more opportunities and the ones who have the talent to succeed, but your branding could be the reason why you're not taken seriously as a competitor.

— hundredz 🇰🇷 (@hundredzgg) April 1, 2023

But non-male streamers reacted negatively to hundredz’ assessment of the situation. They pointed out that there are many talented Apex Legends players who are just overlooked or not given the same opportunities to prove themselves.

“I played with plenty of girls in the community even when I was way better, and I can distinctly remember being carried by every single one of them. Just don’t be a f—ing weirdo and treat them like a human being — it’s simple. I shouldn’t even have to tell y’all this,” one streamer ranted.

I can confidently say that there’s hella women in the apex community that are just plain better at the game than I am lmao. Y’all just don’t give girls a HONEST chance man fr, if you just play with a girl and treat them just like you treat a brother you’d see it’s no different.

— DIEGO (@diegosaurs) April 1, 2023

Idk man, I think there are some pretty high skilled women in the Apex community. It would have been cool to see more captain spots given to them: especially during women’s month. But, people will organize their tournaments as they please & it is what it is. pic.twitter.com/NMUC3n5tCE

— Lex (@VioletLex) April 2, 2023

One solution, brought up by SoaR streamer VioletLex, was to have more women be picked as captains. It was clear that the chosen captains were not interested in diversity and were more focused on picking their friends.

To combat this, other tournaments — like the 2022 TSM Invitational — have created rules where each team must have at least one female player. This tournament ended up with 10 female players out of 60.

Others suggested an event like the VCT Game Changers or Overwatch 2’s Calling All Heroes. This would give marginalized genders more opportunity to compete without fear of discrimination or harassment. Giving them a showcase for their talent could bring other opportunities in mainstream tournaments as well.

Meanwhile, Apex Legends content creators have organized all-female tournaments to support one another.

While NICKMERCS and his homies most likely didn’t purposefully leave out women, it’s clear that there needs to be more mainstream events focused on giving marginalized genders a chance to compete at a high level.