Flashpoint apologizes after “unfortunate” issues plague CSGO qualifiers

Flashpoint’s organizers FACEIT have issued an apology after a problem-riddled first week of qualifiers saw brackets reset mid-way through, and players abused by admins.

Flashpoint’s CS:GO league qualifiers have once again been marred by controversy after numerous complaints were voiced following the weekend’s action.

From unclear technical pause rules, to admin abuse, players were disappointed in the experience being a let-down compared to previous FACEIT events.

FACEIT came out and issued an apology to players for the “unfortunate events” that plagued the league’s qualifiers. Milos Nedeljkovic, partnerships manager at FACEIT, relayed to players the issues they faced during their Open Qualifiers were unprecedented in their four-year history.

However, they also clarified why they made the decisions they did, which when stacked up made for a disaster, according to players. One such decision was the removal of in-server technical pauses, which Nedeljkovic said was to stop “historical abuse” of the system.

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“We decided against allowing players to use technical pauses directly on the server due to historical abuse of the way in which they were used during previous high-volume FACEIT Open Qualifiers,” he said, before stating the rule had been amended for future weeks.

The major issue players had with the qualifiers, especially in Europe, was the restarting of brackets half-way through. FACEIT mentioned the restart was caused by “unforeseen technical infrastructure issues,” with the only remedy being a full restart.

“The time it would have taken to fully understand which matches had a reliable outcome would have prevented the Qualifier from continuing that day,” he said.

“For this reason, and due to the short window of time available with other qualifiers taking place on consecutive days, we made the decision to restart the qualifier.”

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The decision angered players, none more so than Yacine ‘yzn’ Laghmari and his squad, who had taken down top-seeded team ForZe in the first round.

However, after he voiced his frustrations on Twitter, he was then made the target of admin abuse, something FACEIT has cracked down on in the days since.

“As many in the community have probably noticed, an unfortunate conversation took place between a member of FPL-C Staff and yzn,” said Nedeljkovic.

“During that conversation the attitude of the admin was not appropriate and they then took an action that is certainly not aligned with what FPL stands for. The admin in question has been relieved from his role and we immediately apologized to yzn in private and reinstated him back to FPL-C.”

The Flashpoint qualifiers will continue on February 14.