Hi everyone,

We are sharing this post with you to address and clarify the events that occurred in the past number of days related to the FLASHPOINT Open Qualifiers.

Regarding the lack of Tech Pause enabled on the server

We decided against allowing players to use technical pauses directly on the server due to historical abuse of the way in which they were used during previous high volume (500+ teams) FACEIT Open Qualifiers.

However, as stated in the ruleset (Section 3.5.2), during a match where there are clear technical issues, an admin can be called who can decide to resume/reconfigure the match. We understand this rule should have provided more direct instruction and that this caused teams to continue playing without getting appropriate admin support or without calling any admin. Moving forward, we’re amending this rule by making it much more clear what the ruling is around technical pause usage.

Regarding the issue with the FLASHPOINT EU Open Qualifier 3 and the decision to rehost it

The decision to restart EU Open Qualifier 3 came as a result of an unforeseen technical infrastructure issue which caused the first two rounds of the bracket to have inconsistencies, with teams being placed in multiple matches at the same time. Due to the size of the Qualifier (500+ teams) and the nature of the issue, we were regrettably unable to manually fix the bracket and guarantee a regular continuation of the tournament.

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.

This was the first time our team was facing this type of issue in four years of running large open qualifiers on our platform. We are aware that not everyone is happy with the decision taken, but at that moment, it was the best course of action for us to take.

YZN and the unfortunate conversation with an FPL-C staff member

As a consequence of our decision to restart the EU FLASHPOINT Open Qualifier #3, some players came to seek help and clarifications in the FPL Challenger hub chat and, as many in the community have probably noticed, an unfortunate conversation took place between a member of FPL-C Staff and the player ‘’yzn’.

During that conversation the attitude of the admin was not appropriate and they then took an action that is certainly not aligned with what FPL stands for. For this reason, as it has been communicated with all the FPL-C players on Sunday morning, the admin in question has been relieved from his role and we immediately apologized to yzn in private and reinstated him back to FPL-C.

With this post we wanted to provide answers that address the unfortunate events that took place during the past days and for which we take full responsibility. We would also like to extend our sincere apologies to all those that have been negatively affected.