FACEIT responds to Flashpoint Open Qualifier drama

After a series of problems surrounding the handling of the Flashpoint Open Qualifiers, FACEIT's Milos Nedeljkovic has published a statement to tackle the majority of these concerns.

Initially, the Flashpoint Open Qualifiers clashed with Open Qualifiers for the ESL One Rio Major.

Creative director Duncan "Thorin" Shields stated that FLASHPOINT had dates locked in before ESL, but it later transpired the dates had shifted since that confirmation and thus ESL were not at fault.

The Flashpoint Qualifiers were then moved to new dates later in the week to prevent the clash.

On 9th February, the entire third Open Qualifier had to be restarted as a result of the "unforeseen technical infrastructure issue which caused the first two rounds of the bracket to have inconsistencies, with teams being placed in multiple matches at the same time" as explained in the statement.

Yacine "yzn" Laghmari's team had beaten the highest-seeded team, forZe, before this restart was initiated and took to social media to question the decision.

A FACEIT admin known as "FearSC" went on to mock yzn for his removal from FPL rather than address the issues surrounding the qualifier.

The following day, Turkey5's Engin "MAJ3R" Kupeli Tweeted that his team had to play with a bot as a technical pause was not allowed to be taken.

In the full statement, it is explained that previous abuse of the pause system in large qualifiers led to the decision to prevent directly stopping the game, but that an admin can be called in to initiate the pause. Going forward, the rule will be adjusted and made clearer to teams to prevent similar issues recurring. 

Expectations remain high for the new league, with the backing of ten buy-in organisations and a strong lineup of talent including Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles and Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat.