30 teams allegedly removed from ESL One Los Angeles Major open qualifiers in South America

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ESL locked around 30 teams out of the check-in process for the South American open qualifiers for the ESL One Los Angeles Major, pulling them out of the bracket after claiming they were “not registered in the DPC (Dota Pro Circuit) this year,” according to one player who claims to have signed up with their team to compete in the SA open qualifiers.

The initial post by Reddit user micossa was just made to spotlight the fact that 30 teams could not access the check-in page and were apparently missing from the team’s listing before the qualifiers started. That matches were supposed to start at 3pm CT, but due to the confusion, micossa and many others were left waiting for ESL to help them resolve the issues. 

In an edit made a little over an hour after the first post, the player said that their team was completely removed from the qualifiers after the brackets were already generated by the TO. 

“Our team has now been randomly pulled out from the qualifiers,” micossa said. “The brackets have already been generated, with the more well known teams all registered and good to go – a lot of them getting first round byes. This not only has never happened before but also leaves us completely demoralized as players trying to break through an already limping region. This sucks.”

This does hurt as SA is typically referred to as the weakest of all Major Dota regions and often looked down upon or given the shortest end of whatever stick the community is handing out. In this case, the field of potential teams was nearly cut in half and the entire qualifying process now seems tainted.

Micossa followed up again, saying they had contacted the ESL admins, but received no help despite meeting all of the qualifications listed by the TOs on the sign-up page. 

“I’ve contacted ESL admins, who argued our team is not registered in the DPC this year,” micossa said. “We’re not only registered as I’ve stated above, but this would’ve been the third time this season we’d play open qualis. I attached a pic of our registration as it came as no surprise that they didn’t even care to check we registered in their platform with our own Steam IDs.”

This mistake is only compounded by the fact that Team Secret’s manager Matthew “Cyborgmatt” Bailey also commented about reaching out to ESL because the organization was requiring players to register through the DPC registry when that is technically not required for open qualifiers. 

“You don’t need to be registered on the DPC website to play open qualifiers,” Cyborgmatt said. “You only need to register if your team wins the open qualifiers. ESL has made a mistake here, I contacted some people to make them aware however I think it may be too late for some teams.”

And this is true, Valve does only require teams who make it into the closed portion of a regional qualifier to sign-up through the DPC registry, which helps in keeping the number of teams staff have to keep track of to a minimum. Most other TOs, such as StarLadder, WePlay!, and DreamHack all followed this perception for the past DPC events each have put on. 

ESL, however, has a rule that states all teams must have “a valid active Dota 2 Pro Circuit roster,” which requires teams to sign-up through Valve directly. And according to other players in the comments that did not do so, there was not a check done by ESL upon registration to make sure each team had done so. 

It is currently unclear just how many rosters were affected by these cuts, but it is unlikely that any retroactive changes will be made now that the SA qualifiers are already underway.