The Asia Pacific Predator League 2024 is running in full swing now, where players from across APAC compete in Valorant and Dota 2 for a combined prize pool of $200,000; that comes up to about RM929,500. Of course, we have two Malaysian teams at the tournament: Todak for Valorant, and Myth Avenue Gaming for Dota 2.

Unfortunately, both teams have been eliminated on the first day of the Predator League 2024 after facing off against some tough teams. These include Team Secret and Execration, both of which were invited to the tournament. Nonetheless, we sat down and talked to Todak and Myth Avenue Gaming on what happened, and why the Malaysian esports scene needs to be improved.

One of the most interesting subjects that we discussed is the current state of the Malaysian esports scene, which still has plenty of room for improvement. It’s evident that Malaysia has quite a number of talented players. Many incredibly successful esports athletes hail from our country, including xNova, MidOne, and NothingToSay. It’s worth noting that these players are currently playing for foreign teams outside of Malaysia.

So what’s lacking? Well, avenues to actually discover players with such talents. The thing is, local esports tournaments, which are necessary to foster the local esports community as much as possible, are few and far between. Yes, the mobile space sees a healthy amount of local tournaments – especially for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang – but the PC side of things don’t get quite as much attention.

Beyond the Malaysian esports scene, we (naturally) talked about Predator League 2024 itself. Both Malaysian teams agree that it is a great tournament that offers them the chance to gain valuable experiences by playing against tier one teams like the aforementioned Team Secret and Execration. That being said, they do wish that the format of the tournament was different.

The thing is, every match in Predator League 2024 (except for the grand final) is a best-of-one. Not only does this limit the amount of matches that every team can play to, again, gain experience, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to turn things around when strategies don’t go as planned either. That means the chances for incredible “comeback” moments to happen aren’t very likely in this tournament.

Todak added that it is confident in the team’s skill levels, but the other teams have more tournament experiences, which ultimately got the better of Todak. There’s not much room for error in a best-of-one format, after all. As for Myth Avenue Gaming, it didn’t have the ideal team chemistry, given that it was established purely to enter the Malaysia qualifier of Predator League 2024. Again, this circles back to the Malaysian esport scene that still needs to be fostered to truly flourish.

Nonetheless, the Predator League 2024 will continue this weekend on 13 and 14 January for the semifinals and grand final respectively at the SM Mall of Asia Arena in Manila, The Philippines. You can catch all the action on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.