The Chinese esports organization EHOME has been competing at the highest level in this season’s Dota Pro Circuit, but some recent travel issues might hinder their next few events.
The first instance of trouble brewing came on Feb. 16 in a post to EHOME’s Weibo page where famous Dota 2 player and current coach for the organization, Zhang “xiao8” Ning, was asking for help.
In the post, xiao8 requests aid in trying to find a way around traditional visa processes for the upcoming DreamLeague Season 11 Stockholm Major. One of their players, Luo “eGo” Bin, is still 17, which means in order to get a visa to attend the event in Stockholm the team would need his parents to provide documents for him.
Those documents could take up to 20 days to arrive and then the team would need to send those documents in along with the other necessary paperwork to begin the actual visa process, which can take another 15 days. That means in total, eGo would have to wait for a minimum of 30 days for his visa.
Even though his parents began the process back on Feb. 11, that leaves them an extremely narrow window for the visa to get approved before the Major begins on Mar. 14.
Knowing that, xiao8 put out a call for help to potentially find a way that would allow eGo to attend the event. Specifically, he asked if anyone could help him get in touch with the Swedish embassy to try and speed up the process.
But that news was only the start of what would be an avalanche of issues for EHOME over the next several days.
As it turns out, eGo isn’t the only travel concern on EHOME’s mind right now, especially now that xiao8 is having to stand-in during the group stage of MDL Macau 2019 because of a separate issue.
The team’s midlaner Li “ASD” Zhiwen will be sitting out for at least the first portion of the MDL event because his passport didn’t arrive on time. Alone, this issue wouldn’t be that big considering xiao8 is an accomplished veteran Dota player who can competently fill the void.
No, the real issue came hours later when Mars Media, the company running MDL Macau, posted on Facebook announcing another EHOME player, offlaner Zhang “Faith_bian” Ruida suffered a dislocated shoulder during a pre-event photo shoot.
Immediately following his injury, Faith_bian was taken to a hospital in Macau for immediate treatment. There, it was announced he would be flying back to Shanghai for further treatment and would, therefore, be removed from the roster for the event.
In another post to his Weibo, xiao8 stated that he “probably can’t handle MDL anymore” following his second player being pulled. This leaves them with less than five hours to find another stand-in for their roster or they will have to forfeit.
This isn’t the first or even second time something like this has happened this season, as visa and passport issues have long been something that professional esports players have struggled with. In October, both Evil Geniuses’ Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan and his brother, Forward Gaming’s Yawar “YawaR” Hassan, were forced to miss ESL One Hamburg due to their visas being delayed.
Related: MDL Macau 2019 completes roster by adding Evil Geniuses
This does, however, make an otherwise manageable situation a lot worse because of the timetable. The combination of injury and passport troubles might have sunk a chance for EHOME to pull in another win at a big event.
MDL Macau begins Feb. 19 at 9pm CT where a group of eight talented teams will battle for their share of $300,000.
