NIP, Anonymo to replay Flashpoint 3 Mirage game

The two teams will square off again on Tuesday.

Ninjas in Pyjamas and Anonymo will replay on Tuesday at 21:00 the final map of their Flashpoint 3 series, Mirage, the organisers have announced. The decision follows a request submitted by NIP, whose players experienced connection issues throughout Friday's series, which ended with a 2-1 victory for the Polish side in the biggest upset of the first round of the Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournament.

Flashpoint said that it gave Anonymo the choice between replaying the entire series or only the decider map because NIP's first official request to "not play the match" was submitted only after the conclusion of Nuke, the second map of the series, which was won by the Polish team 16-13. The organisers added that they had spoken "at length with both teams and consulted the CSPPA [Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association]" on the matter.

Flashpoint restated that the security configuration of the server was behind the "severe and persistent packet loss" experienced by Ninjas in Pyjamas's players. Since it was concluded that there was nothing that the Swedish team could have done to resolve the issue, the organisers accepted the request to replay the match.

The decision to postpone the rematch until Tuesday, Flashpoint explained, was made to give teams enough time to prepare and to cool the nerves of the community after "a lot of information started circulating on public channels, some accurate, others less so." Anonymo had claimed that they were being pressured by NIP and Flashpoint into accepting a rematch and that the organisers were themselves being pressured by the Swedish organisation "on a business level". In response, NIP labelled Anonymo's statement as "shockingly misleading" and accused the Polish team of "fueling a massive frenzy of speculation amongst esports professionals and the wider CS:GO community."

According to Flashpoint, the match admin ordered the teams to play on despite NIP’s complaints as a decision to postpone a match cannot be made simply because one team claims to have issues. The organizer confirmed that an Anonymo player suggested in the in-game chat that the match could be played on another day due to the issues experienced by Ninjas in Pyjamas's players, but since this possibility was not presented via the official channels, it was not taken into consideration.

Flashpoint offered "a sincere apology" to the teams, players and the community, acknowledging that the information that was communicated on Sunday failed to provide "a clear and complete picture about the facts and decisions that happened."

"We understand that not everyone will agree with the final outcome regardless, but at every stage of this process we’ve focused on making the decision we thought was best to provide a fair and competitive environment within a framework of constraints, all of which are defined within the official rulebook," Flashpoint said.

"We also understand that the final decision and the rules that determined the overall outcome of our decision process may seem misaligned with the general sentiment and opinion of many professional players and community members, in particular about the possibility of replaying a match, no matter the reason."

Flashpoint added that an updated version of the rulebook will be shared with all the teams on Tuesday. The document will "better define the types of issues that will be taken into consideration" and will provide clarification on how rules should be applied moving forward. To prevent similar situations from happening in the future, teams will now have access to the game server at least 24 hours before a match to conduct proper tests and check for "other potentially rare edge cases affecting poor internet performance."

The loser of the series will face HYENAS in the lower bracket on Wednesday, May 19, at 15:00 . Originally scheduled for Tuesday, the elimination match was moved to prevent a team from having to play two matches in one day.