Chris Orfanellis · @GoMeZCSGO
9th Apr 2016 from TwitLonger
ECS Invites
Hey all, as you may have noticed we are not competing in the Faceit ECS. We got an email from Faceit on the 1st of April (5 days before the event started) indicating we were to play in a 'pre-qualifier' with Tempo Storm, Splyce, Selfless, EchoFox, Winterfox etc.
Unfortunately for us, we had already booked our flights back to Australia as we need to finalize our Esport Visas which requires an in person interview in Australia. Our absence from NA will only be about 2 weeks total.
I'm a little disappointed that a tournament boasting a +3millon prize pool was so rushed and poorly organised and communicated. The news of the tournament even existing only really became public the day it started. It's not like they didnt know who to contact for our team, Faceit themselves ran the Malmo qual which we played in (ironic about TempoStorm) and we have played Faceit in Australia for 3 seasons, we all have each other on skype/email etc.
With regards to the invites themselves, some teams do not have core3 roster from previous seasons and are clearly ranked lower than some teams who were forced to play in the qualifier. Just to paint the picture, Splyce, Selfless, Tempo Storm, Renegades and others were told to fight out in a pre-qualifier for 2 spots in the event, yet TSM and Complexity were just direct invited. What more could Tempo Storm do to deserve an invite? I would also argue the rest of us have a fair claim to those invite spots as well.
I don't want to speak on behalf of others too much, but i know Tempo Storm had to withdraw because they are in Malmo. Flipside had similar issues as well.
Anyway it's done, just wanted to let people know the reason we are not playing and express how disappointing and unfortunate the situation has been for something that is apparently the biggest prize pool ever in CSGO.
Hope season 2 works out better and besides all this misfortune we are still keen to play!