Four teams snubbed after PGL restarts Bucharest invitation process

The Romanian tournament organizer has come under fire over a decision that took away four teams' chances to qualify for PGL Bucharest.

PGL has released an updated list of teams participating in its European, North American and South American qualifiers for PGL Bucharest, revealing that ESC, Fire Flux, FAVBET and Chimera's closed qualifier invitations in Europe had been rescinded.

This came after the Romanian tournament organizer acknowledged and apologized for a "mistake" it had made in the invitation process and said it would refine it "to better comply with [Valve's] Tournament Operation Requirements," which led to a week-long delay in Europe and South America.

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PGL Bucharest closed qualifiers delayed

In the original round of invitations that took place in early February, the TO had determined closed qualifier invites and ran open qualifiers before all 12 main event VRS slots were filled out amid negotiations between PGL and some team organizations over the TO's prizemoney allocation.

That is against the principles of Valve's invitation rules. Deciding qualifying spots before the main event can lead to issues when the main event ends up with too few or too many invites depending on how many teams agree to participate.

Following the postponement of the qualifiers, PGL restarted the invitation procedure from the beginning, which gave teams that declined an invitation the first time a chance to change their minds.

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G2, Liquid, FURIA among PGL Bucharest invites

In the new round of invites, HEROIC, Nexus, Nemiga and BC.Game accepted an invitation to the European closed qualifier after they declined one in the first place, causing ESC, Fire Flux, FAVBET and Chimera to fall below the cut-off.

While Chimera and FAVBET participated in some of the open qualifiers, ESC and Fire Flux skipped them after accepting closed qualifier invitations the first time and have made their disappointment clear over never being able to qualify for the tournament.

"After being invited to PGL Bucharest closed qualifier before the open qualifiers started, we now got informed that due to the reschedule we are not invited anymore since teams above us in ranking now have accepted an invite. WTF is this shit," Fire Flux player Robin "⁠ScrunK⁠" Röpke said on X.

"PGL is awesome, you get an invitation to close quali -> they delay the start -> they kick you because they make invitations again -> you don't play open quali and you won't play," ESC's Bartek "⁠mASKED⁠" Trybuła's translated post on X reads.

PGL provided the following statement to HLTV, in which the TO admitted to a "major oversight" that led to restarting the procedure and vowed to learn from the mistake.

"The initial deadline for the 12 direct invites to PGL Bucharest was exceptionally long, lasting over a month. However, due to a major oversight on our part, we scheduled the qualifiers too close to the direct invite deadline (one day apart). This way, we sent the invites for the qualifiers too early," PGL's statement reads.

"Unfortunately we realized this mistake too late and determined that the only way to resolve the issue we had created was to restart the invite process with much shorter deadlines. The second time, some teams that initially rejected the first invite accepted the invite, therefore changing some of the CQ teams.

"We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We have learned from our mistakes and are committed to improving next time."

The North American closed qualifier kicked off on Wednesday, March 5, and the South American and European closed qualifiers will follow on March 7, with one spot at PGL Bucharest up for grabs among 32 teams in each region.