ESL Responds to Stream Schedule Complaints

The competitive Halo community has been up in arms, and for good reason, about the details of the upcoming HCS North American Finals and Relegation Tournament. It was revealed by member of eLevate, Dillon “Randa” Randa, that the first round of the relegation and promotion tournament would not be streamed on Saturday. Instead, the matches of Team Liquid vs Team eLevate and OpTicGaming vs Denial eSports will be played on warm-up stations, leaving fans in the dark. Fans were, as noted, very upset about this. You can read about this outrage here on GAMURS and see many of the complaints raised by various members of the community. The outcry against this policy quickly culminated in a post on the front page of the Halo subreddit.  Today, the senior product manager of ESL America has responded to these complaints in the form of a comment on Reddit: We have heard the community’s conversations about relegation matches, and we wanted to let you know why the decision was made to play Round 1matches off-stream. Our main goal was to make sure all teams are given an opportunity to compete in streamed matches on stage and onLAN in order to provide the best possible Halo experience for players and fans alike. Due to the fact that the finals are happening at an off-site venue (which has specific regulations we need to follow), and that we have switched to a double elimination, Bo7 format, this has put a considerable time constraint on the event. As a result and after intensive internal and external discussions, we landed on a schedule that makes the best use of the available time and ensures all elimination and qualification matches are shown. To accomplish this, we had to sacrifice streaming the Round 1 relegation matches. We understand that many of you have loyalties to the teams that are playing in relegation. With the double elimination format, we are still able to bring all of the relegation elimination and qualification matches to the stream without the teams having to wake up at an excessively early hour and still giving the players ample preparation time for deciding matches. Given our constraints, we feel this is the most favorable solution. We know the value of watching your favorite teams play and we share your passion for competitive Halo. Our team is working around the clock to create a finals experience worthy of the HCS Pro League. We apologize for the delay in releasing this information and the schedule, especially with so much on the line, but we felt it necessary to exhaust all options regarding the stream and factor in all the variables before making the final decision. We will continue to find ways to improve the future of the HCS Pro League. As always, we appreciate your valuable feedback and continued support, and we hope you enjoy the HCS NA Finals. -ESL Timo It seems that despite the outcry from the community, ESL is sticking to their policy and not bending to the will of the community. His response was largely met with more negativity and disappointment. We at GAMURS will try our best to keep you updated on the situation and cover all of the events happening this weekend. What do you think about ESL’s response? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @GAMURScom. Patrick Cowley can be contacted on Twitter, @PtrckCowley.