Titan: "We were forced to exit ESEA"

The French team were sitting fourth in the league, with 18 points from eight matches, and looked like a serious candidate for the LAN Finals, which will take place in late June in Dallas.

Titan justify the move with the fact that they were unable to register their newest recruit, Kenny "kennyS" Schrub, in the league due to team rosters being locked from last Sunday until the end of the season.

Titan won't be travelling to Dallas in June

This meant that Titan would have to play the remainder of the season, including the LAN finals if they managed to qualify for the event, with Richard "shox" Papillon, something that was impossible for the team.

Titan still tried to reason with ESEA over this matter, but the discussion proved "unfruitful", says Titan manager Jérôme "NiaK" Sudries, who labelled the rule about roster restrictions "archaic".

Below you can find the complete statement from Sudries:

"Today is a sad day for Titan and our CS:GO team, as we’ve been forced to withdraw from ESEA S16.

"Having begun the new season on March 19th 2014, our current results put us in a good position to claim a spot at the upcoming finals in Dallas. However, the organisers have decided to invoke the player change rule which prevents us from bringing Kenny “kennyS” Schrub onto the team, despite this happening two months before the actual LAN final.

"After a long and unfruitful discussion with ESEA to try and find a solution, we ultimately felt a need to go public with the issue; not only to present you with our side of the story but more importantly to highlight a rule which feels archaic in the current competitive scene.

"The rule regarding “Player Eligibility & Roster Restrictions” for the Invite division states that "Rosters will be locked two weeks before the end of the regular season". This in turn ensures weeks/months of unaltered lineups at the end of each season, and for this season that translated to a two month roster lock in place from April 27th to June 29th. In our case, coordinating our announcement of a player change with another organisation meant us going public with the news on Monday 28th April, just a few hours too late.

"But the issue is not being a few hours late; the issue is that ESEA does not exist in a vacuum. With a yearly tournament calendar including events and organisers such as SLTV StarSeries , ESL, FACEIT League, Gfinity , Fragbite Masters and Fnatic FRAGOUT league (just to mention a few), is it truly reasonable that a single organiser can implement a rule preventing player transfers covering such an extensive time period? With three seasons per year, ESEA is effectively trying to enforce a roster lock which covers way more than just ESEA.

"We are not against the idea of roster locks, but these require harmonisation between all major tournament schedules, which is not the case today.

"Also, as a personal source of disappointment, Titan and I had actively been working with the promoters of this season to facilitate conditions which would allow all European teams the chance to make the trip in case of qualifying. During ESEA S14, out of all the EU teams only NiP were able to make the trip, and the same pattern repeated itself last season when we ourselves were the only EU team represented at the LAN. For us, working closely with ESEA to prevent this from happening again was important and a way to help sustain the North American scene.

"These things considered, it’s with no small amount of bitterness that we withdraw today.  We hope, however, that this open letter will be a move in the right direction towards removing inappropriate rules which do not serve the interest or the progression of high level competition."

What do you think about Titan's decision? Should ESEA remove this roster restrictions? Leave a comment below.