Quinn Callahan of Gaimin Gladiator just won the Lima Major championship, but the triumph was quickly eclipsed by an unexpected admission. The player thought it was unfair that the Ukrainian squad B8 switched to the North American region, which Quinn called a “effort to steal a slot.”
Quinn recalled a past disqualification of his team from the South American qualifiers for the Chongqing Major. The mid-laner’s squad was disqualified after winning the qualifiers, which must have left a bitter taste in his mouth for all these years.
Quinn’s reaction was prompted by the fact that there’s currently a team filled with Eastern European players competing in the North American region. Given how the two incidents may look similar from an outsider’s perspective, Quinn asked for an explanation on why they’re being allowed to continue while his team was disqualified after securing a Major seat.
Fans quickly disapproved of Quinn’s statement, however, since the two cases were nothing alike when inspected closely. The team that Valve disqualified had two SA and three NA members.
Valve’s rulebook requires players to have at least three members present at the region they’re competing, but Quinn’s team only had two. The squad solved this problem by flying in the rest of their members, but they would fly immediately back to NA once the qualifiers were over. This rubbed Valve the wrong way, and the developer decided this wasn’t fair to the region’s faithful.
The disqualified roster argued that they had three members in SA, claiming Francis “FLee” Lee was staying in the region. Despite the explanations, their case was never reopened again.
B8, on the other hand, completely relocated their Dota 2 roster to North America, even setting up a bootcamp in Mexico. The team has only left the region during a break while making sure they remain in NA physically throughout a DPC season. It should also be noted that Valve didn’t have a sound rulebook like it does today at the time of the incident, so the developer had to make a decision on the fly, which ended up being an example.
While Quinn’s curiosity could be justified since his disqualification came after qualifying for a major, his revisiting matter caused a fair bit of backlash from the fans. This was only the second tweet that the player posted after winning the Lima Major, earning him the title Sore Winner.
