An ESL ruling has allowed Ben "Cattlepillar" Bunk, who has already qualified for NA Summer Regional #2 with Brain Power, to join Cloud9 in their attempts to earn a spot at the regional in the final invitational qualifier Sunday.

A TwitLonger posted Wednesday by Zac "Tabris" Conely of ESL League Operations confirmed a change to the wording of section 1.3 of the qualifier's ruleset, calling it a clarification. Prior to this ruling, the rules appeared to prevent Cattlepillar from playing with another team that was attempting to qualify.

The rule change was met with backlash on social media, where both players and team management expressed their frustration with the move.

@GFE_Mavnis 90% of the time admins would rather change the rules than make a decision. having rules able to be changed at any time isnt good — Equinox (@AstralEquinox) May 18, 2016

@AstralEquinox Well we will see. Lets see who steps up to say something. I know we are not ok with this. I know others are not as well. — Freddie Crespo JR (@GFE_Mavnis) May 18, 2016

Sources close to team management confirmed to theScore esports that a meeting was held on Wednesday evening between the management of several North American Heroes organizations who were dissatisfied with the ruling.

As a result of the change, one section of the qualifier's ruleset now reads as follows:

If your team qualifies for the Los Angeles Summer Regional, the team will no longer be allowed to play in the remaining qualifiers. One player may be dropped / added after a team has qualified, once you have left a team you cannot return to that team until after that seasons global finals. If your team qualifies for the Summer Championship, the players still on the roster won't be allowed to join other teams for the rest of the qualifiers.

The Summer Championship is scheduled to be held at DreamHack Summer in Jönköping, Sweden. However, the original wording said the "Los Angeles Championship," which appears to be a reference to the second North America Regional in Burbank, CA:

If your team qualifies for the Los Angeles Championship, the team will no longer be allowed to play in the remaining qualifiers. One player may be dropped / added after a team has qualified, once you have left a team you cannot return to that team until after that seasons global finals. If your team qualifies for the Los Angeles Championship, the players still on the roster wont be allowed to join other teams for the rest of the qualifiers.

Blizzard has never announced plans for the Summer Championship to be held in Los Angeles. The only currently announced Heroes event being held in LA is the regional.

Additionally, ESL's webpage contains a link that calls the regional "2016 Championship Los Angeles." Clicking on the link takes the user to a page that contains a banner advertising the second NA Summer regional and links to the qualifiers for that event as well as the Spring NA Regional's group stage and playoff bracket.

The only other possible section of the ruleset that could be confused might be the words "still on the roster," which appear to imply at the time of qualification, but which were also not part of the wording that was changed in ESL's clarification.

ESL has yet to issue any further public statements about the clarification. An email to ESL's public relations team by theScore esports had not been met with official comment by time of publication. Reached directly, Conely said he was unable to offer comment on the record. The qualifier will be played on Sunday.

Brain Power is the new name for the former COGnitive Gaming lineup that parted ways with the organization on May 12. Cattlepillar left the team to join Cloud9, replacing Taylor "Arthelon" Eder, according to his former teammate Kayla "Faye" Murray. He is regarded as one of the region's strongest warrior players, but also a shrewd drafter and shotcaller.

Though Cloud9 hasn't issued a confirmation of the move, tweets from Cattle about the clarified ruling all but confirm that he intends to play with C9 on Sunday.

Cattle's departure left Brain Power without a warrior player and forced to find one on extremely short notice, but ESL announced that the team would receive an extension to name his replacement.

After deliberation with other team managers and ESL, Brain Power will be allowed 3 extra days to secure their 5th player for LA. EOD 5/26 — Zac Conely (@TheeTabris) May 19, 2016

This isn't the first time that ESL has grappled with the issue of a player who had already qualified for a regional before moving to another roster.

ESL made an exception in the past for EU player Matic "Zarmony" Mikec when he was removed from Team Dignitas before ESL Heroes of the Storm Championship — Katowice in March. When Reason Gaming's Nikita “zwHydra” Medvedev became ill, ESL allowed Zarmony to play for Reason Gaming in his stead.

In that case, the flex player did not choose to voluntarily leave Dignitas. At the time, ESL described the decision to allow him to sub as an exception and not a clarification of the rules. No wording in the ruleset was amended as the result of this exception.

Josh "Gauntlet" Bury is a news editor for theScore esports. You can find him on Twitter.