This article is part of our CS:GO series.
When Immortals were forced to forfeit a map in the grand finals of DreamHack Montreal, few could have guessed the extent to which the incident would rock not just the team, but tCS:GO landscape. They were Twitter death threats, suspensions, and benchings. Here we are a month later and Henrique "HEN1" Teles, Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles, and Vito "kNgV-" Giuseppe hold Legend status at the ELEAGUE Major in January with their new team. Immortals, meanwhile, failed to qualify for the Major and will be on the outside looking in even though the team went to the grand finals of the last Major. Wait, what?
The roster rules in place for the ELEAGUE Major provide that teams who achieve Legend status must keep the majority of their rosters in order to retain a spot in the Major. Makes sense, right? You'd want to have a system like this in place to prevent teams from simply dropping players to create super teams in between Majors. If you made it to the top-8 of a Major, you should have to bring the majority of the same roster back the next time around.
We saw this rule officially put in place leading up to the ELEAGUE Premier 2017 a couple months back. OpTic Gaming had been invited, but a couple weeks before the event was set to start, they switched out four of the five players. OpTic essentially dropped their North American rosters for European talent, which brought up a whole different issue in terms of what region they should play in during Season 6 of the ESL Pro League. What is of importance here is that the team lost their spot in the Premier after dropping 80 percent of their team. That seems like a perfectly reasonable application of this rule.
If only it were always that simple.
Looping back around to Immortals, the implications of this rule bring about some major issues that I don't think were considered when this rule was put in place.
In the aftermath of the DreamHack Montreal incident, kNgV- was initially suspended before parting ways with the team towards the end of September. Just a few days after that, HEN1 and LUCAS1 asked to be released from the team so that they could join kNgV- on a new roster in the near future. Immortals didn't grant the release, and instead benched both players. That seemed to be the end of it until we heard from LUCAS1 this past Monday.
We are proud of presenting our team for the MAJOR! It will be Fnx, hen1, kng, bit and I. [1/2]
— Lucas Teles (@IMTLucas1) October 16, 2017
Just to recap, kNgV- was essentially released by Immortals, while HEN1 and LUCAS1 asked to be released. Which means that just like that, those three technically own the rights to the spot at the ELEAGUE Major that they helped Immortals obtain last July. Sure, HEN1 and LUCAS1 would need to have their contracts bought out by a new organization in order to make this come to fruition, but the fact that it is even a possibility is a major problem.
Three player shouldn't be able to jump ship and take a Major spot with them. If a team makes big roster moves like OpTic did, sure, that seems completely fair. But in this case? Why should Immortals lose out on a coveted Major spot because they had to let one player go after he issued death threats on Twitter, causing the other two to ask for a release? That just seems incredibly unfair.
When it comes to this particular rule, I think a change needs to be made about the nature of the roster moves that bring about the application of the rule. While there shouldn't be any subjective considerations brought in, to be sure, if the rule is being invoked, it shouldn't be enacted if it comes as the result of release following a suspension or when players ask for a release. Better yet, a clause preventing players from running away with a Major spot should be put in place to prevent this altogether.
This is certainly an issue that won't get directly resolved in time for Immortals to get their spot back considering that they already were eliminated from the qualifier. For future ELEAGUE Majors, this is a rule change that needs to be looked at and revised.
