$100K HER Galaxy Apex Legends Open Winners Remain Unpaid

$100K Her Galaxy Apex Legends Open winners remain unpaid nine months later. Credit: Galaxy Racer

It has been a little over nine months, or 43 weeks, or 301 days since the $100K HER Galaxy Apex Legends Open concluded on June 25, 2023, but the winning players and LeagueSpot—the tournament platform company that facilitated the Apex Legends competition—have still not been paid by Dubai-based esports organization Galaxy Racer (GXR).

Sources told The Esports Advocate this week that there has been no communication with GXR for a very long time, and many of the players who are owed money have given up hope of ever being paid for all the hard work they put into competing in this event that was supposed to uplift, highlight, and support women in esports.

Those teams include Team Cuties, who won the tournament and is entitled to $40K USD; Luminosity Red, which took second place and earned $25K; and Team Lust, which earned $15K for taking third place, according to Galaxy Racer.

In December, GXR missed the 180-day payout deadline detailed in the contracts players signed to participate in the tournament, which would have seen payments disbursed on or around Dec. 22 or 23. In February, GXR Chief of Staff Walid Singer told TEA in an email that the company hoped to meet its obligations by the end of month, but that never happened. Since that time, the company has gone silent.

Sources also told TEA this week that Chicago-based tournament organizer LeagueSpot still has not been paid the $40K it is owed for its work in facilitating the $100K HER Galaxy Apex Legends Open last year.  Like players, GXR is no longer responding to LeagueSpot’s inquiries about the money it is owed, according to sources.

TEA reached out to GXR for an update on the situation last week, but the company did not respond to a request for comment.

TEA has also known for quite some time (since we first started covering GXR’s issues with paying staff at the now defunct North American offices last year) that the company also owes content creators/competitors in its GXR Elite program back pay. A majority of the GXR Elite members (who have consistently declined to comment on this situation) are owed somewhere between the high-end of five figures or the low-end of six figures in back pay, collectively, according to sources TEA has spoken to over the last six months.

Despite these ongoing challenges, the GXR brand is still being used in competitive gaming; recently Gamers Galaxy Pakistan 2024, an online PUBG Mobile competition, concluded. The tournament has a total prize pool of ₨ 2,500,000 PKR (roughly $8,982.87 USD according to rates from the State Bank of Pakistan) and is being run by Galaxy Racer Pakistan and produced by Next Generation Esports.

Galaxy Racer India was also one of the invited teams to Battlegrounds Mobile India Series 2024: The Grind, an official qualifier series event for invited teams before the start of the official Battlegrounds Mobile India Series (BGIS) 2024. TEA has detailed the challenges of workers at Galaxy Racer India in previous reporting.

On multiple occasions, GXR management has attributed many of its delays in paying its financial obligations to its ongoing merger with Dubai-based Riva Technology and Entertainment. There hasn’t been any public communication or update on the status of this merger for quite some time.

We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

This story originally appeared in The Fudge Retort, TEA’s weekly newsletter on Substack, on April 21, 2024.