FLASHPOINT restarts EU qualifier, had banned tech pauses

FACEIT has issued a statement regarding the restarting of the second FLASHPOINT European open qualifier and its lack of technical pauses, amending its rules to ensure that teams have a fair chance to compete.

Trouble started when Engin “MAJ3R” Küpeli and Turkey5 played seven rounds without one of their players in FLASHPOINT’s European qualifiers due to a technical issue. Unfortunately for Turkey5, FACEIT had disabled the ability to use technical pauses for the event.

During the FLASHPOINT open qualifier, Turkey5 was tied 5-5 against Vexed Gaming on Nuke when Turkey5’s Engin “ngiN“ Kor disconnected from the server and couldn’t rejoin. When Turkey5 called for a technical pause, a member of Vexed informed him that no technical pauses were allowed during the open qualifiers.

MAJ3R revealed the information on Twitter, saying that Turkey5 had to play out seven rounds with a bot on the server due to tournament rules. The rule was eventually clarified by a FACEIT admin, who said that technical pauses were a matter of competitive integrity due to the inability to enforce silence during the pause. 

While the reasoning makes sense, the official tournament rules for the European Qualifiers make no mention that technical pauses are not allowed.

According to the server and chat logs, ngiN disconnected due to his anti-cheat client losing connection to the FACEIT server. Under the qualification rules, a FACEIT live support admin could have not only paused the match but rolled it back to the round prior to the disconnect.

3.5.2 – Match Interrupted

If a match is involuntarily interrupted (player crash, server crash, network cuts,…) the Live Support Admin may decide to resume the match to the round before the issue was present to give both teams a fair chance.

FACEIT responded yesterday with a blog post from FACEIT Partnership Manager Milos Nedeljkovic, saying that they have amended this rule to make it clearer to teams when they can call an admin.

Bug forces FLASHPOINT reset open qualifier 3

Turkey5 wasn’t the only team to have trouble in the FLASHPOINT EU qualifiers. The entire third open qualifier for the region was restarted midway through, prompting confusion amongst those competing. Julia “juliano” Kiran took to Twitter to ask FACEIT why her qualifier match was canceled mid-game. A FACEIT admin responded, explaining that a bug in the tournament system caused the cancelations. 

Nedeljkovic also responded to this in his post on Medium:

“The time it would have taken to fully understand which matches had a reliable outcome would have prevented the Qualifier from continuing that day. For this reason, and due to the short window of time available with other qualifiers taking place on consecutive days, we made the decision to restart the qualifier from zero,” Nedeljkovic said.

FLASHPOINT qualifier schedule proves tough for FACEIT

Time seems to have been a factor in FACEIT’s decision to simply restart the qualifiers. Slated to start at some time in March, the qualifiers for North America, South America, and Europe are ongoing.

So far, FLASHPOINT’s open qualifiers aren’t off to a great start in the European region, but it seems like the North American and South American qualifiers have escaped these issues. The difference might be that the number of teams competing in Europe is significantly higher than those in North and South America.

While Europe’s first round maxed out at 512 teams, North America registered 82 teams while South America has 70 sign up. The numbers are similar across the other three qualifiers planned for the regions. 

There is still no word on whether FLASHPOINT will host qualifiers for any other regions.