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Update: NSE have won the tournament, which has raised more than £1,000!
Original article:
London university College of Esports is aiming to unite UK esports with a charity Apex Legends event for GameBlast 25, raising money for SpecialEffect.
SpecialEffect is a UK charity that aims to provide assistive technology to gamers with disabilities. It’s back once again for GameBlast 25, an annual initiative that encourages content creators and organisations to raise money for the cause between February 21st and 23rd 2025.
College of Esports’ Apex Legends tournament will feature a studio broadcast and participants ranging from all different corners of the UK esports industry, from Fnatic to Resolve and many more listed below.
It will take place on Friday February 21st from 1.30pm GMT.
Students from the College of Esports will be running the production for the event.
And Dan ‘FoxDrop’ Wyatt, NLC caster and content creator, will also be returning to host for the broadcast.
“It’s for a good cause and I love working with the students at CoE. They’ve come so far already, and I want to push them to go even further,” Foxdrop said.
Finnlo Merry, Lead Producer for the event, added: “It’s amazing to bring together the UK esports community to support an incredible cause like SpecialEffect. We’re looking forward to putting on a very fun show!”
The news also comes a few weeks after the College of Esports hosted the European Halo Kick-Off 2025 LAN.
Teams taking part in GameBlast 25 College of Esports Apex Legends tournament
Teams will feature esports org staff, students and more. The 20 teams are as follows:
- Atlas
- Resolve
- London Legion
- Noctem Esports
- Storm Broadcast – Karl’s company
- SCL Enigmaz
- Reason Gaming
- Oxford University
- UK Veterans Gaming
- College of Esports
- NSE
- Katana Gaming
- Fnatic
- DSQ Esports
- NUEL
- Middelsborough College
- Exo Clan
- TCS6 Esports
- CRC Inferno
- Spire Scrims
There are a mix of players involved, with UK esports org Resolve fielding COO Jeff Simpkins, head of creative Jiggi and former Navi player Tyler.
You can donate via this Tiltify link and watch the stream on the College of Esports Twitch channel
Streamers, universities and more back GameBlast 25
Others are raising money for SpecialEffect with tournaments and activities.
The University of Northampton raised more than £2,000 with its GameBlast tournament.
Last year, GameBlast raised more than £160,000 to help people with disabilities enjoy video games.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
