Fnaticia ei tulla näkemään Summer Assemblyillä!

WORLD CYBER GAMES NORDIC
PRESS RELEASE 17 July 2010




Helsinki, 17 July 2010: Team Fnatic has been disqualified from the WCG Nordic Counter Strike 1.6 finals since the team has declined the Nordic Final tournament invitation dueto disagreement over the qualifier method and schedules.



"We are disappointed to Fnatic's decision not to participate WCG Nordic qualifiers in Assembly Summer 2010 event held in Helsinki, Finland, in August. We have discussed with the team, but sadly their fans won't be seeing them competing in WCG this year since the team has decided to decline the Nordic Finals", says Petri Hämälä, Director of events in WCG Nordic.

This year's CS 1.6 qualifiers are different from what we have done earlier. The "nordic model" has been approved by WCG headquarters. This model has been also used in various other eSport tournaments so there should not be anything new or unclear to the teams: each country will qualify two teams to the Nordic Finals, out of which one team will emerge as the winner, getting to represent their country in the WCG Grand Finals in USA in September with trip and licences paid by WCG Nordic. These qualifiers have been held in Norway, Sweden and Finland separately. The qualifier model was communicated in March and no teams has raised any concerns or protests when the tournament model and rules were
published - nor during the country qualifiers.

WCG Nordic received a protest from Fnatic in 5th of July about the Nordic Finals. The team expressed their view that one final spot was not enough to all three countries. They also criticized the extra step in the process, since their summer schedule was already quite full. We underlined, that the situation was the same for all the teams and the tournament schedules were explained to the teams in good time ahead. The protest demanded, that Fnatic should get the free spot to the Grand Finals without the Nordic
Qualifier taking place or they would not participate.

This year we had to use an "extra step" in the CS 1.6 qualifiers in Nordics. Of course we would like to send one team per each country, but it was unfortunately not possible this time. Again, the tournament structure was accepted by WCG and the participating teams, when they signed to the national qualifiers.

Therefore we were left with the unfortunate result to disqualify the team from WCG tournament this year since the team declined to participate to Nordic Finals even after discussions with the team's management. Fnatic's spot will be offered to the third placed team in the Swedish qualifiers, team H2K.