Just one day after the team was forced to forfeit their opening series against Thunder Awaken due to unforeseen travel visa issues, Mind Games have officially been removed from the Dota Pro Circuit Stockholm Major by ESL and Valve.
With this decision, every team in Group B for the Major’s Group Stage will automatically be given a bye to the playoffs and will now solely be competing for seeding rather than to avoid elimination on May 15.
For Mind Games, the team was already going to be at a disadvantage heading into the Major as Danil “Bignum” Shekhovtsov and Semion “CemaTheSlayer” Krivulya were both unable to leave Ukraine to compete. This led to the team agreeing to play with PuckChamp support players Genadiy “Astral” Motuz and Andrey “Dukalis” Kuropatkin for the duration of the event instead.
This is especially unfortunate as the Mind Games players previously had confirmation that their visas were approved ahead of the competition and planned to compete with those stand-ins in place. Three players, however, did not receive them in time to make the trip to Stockholm for opening day.
During the DPC’s Spring Tour Playoffs for Eastern Europe, which was run to expedite the season following the region’s season being postponed, Mind Games finished in third, beating the likes of PuckChamp and CIS Rejects to qualify for the Major. They were also on the receiving end of a controversial situation brought on by one of Virtus.pro’s players, which led to the Russian team being disqualified.
