The group stages for Fragbite Masters Season 3 have concluded, where the top two teams from each group will be placed in the upper bracket of the playoffs while the bottom two teams from each group will drop to the lower bracket.
The goup stages were originally not supposed to eliminate any teams from the tournament, but two teams have been disqualified for unprofessional behaviour and alleged hacking. Planeykey Dynamics was disqualified from the tournament after their refusal to play a match with stand-ins, in which the tournament organizers viewed as unprofessional behaviour.
Pontus Eskilsson, the Director of Fragbite had this to say about the situation:
PlanetKey doesn’t seem to respect that there are a lot of hard working people involved in the making of this tournament, both in the participating teams and in the production crew. Who both put in a lot of hours to make this tournament happen in an effort to provide entertainment and joy to the Counter-Strike-community.
To all the fans who were looking forward to there matches, and the people who were affected by this situation: We are very sorry. PlanetKey have been disqualified from this tournament and the players will not be available to participate in the upcoming season. We do not look kindly on this kind of behavior.”
In addition, Team Property have also been disqualified from the tournament after one of their players, Joel "emilio" Mako received a VAC ban during a match against HellRaisers. Mako will be banned from all future Fragbite tournaments while Team Property will only be disqualified from this season.
The playoffs will be played in a double elimination Bo3 format, where the top four teams from the playoffs will advance to the LAN Finals in Stockholm, Sweden which will feature a total prize pool of approximately $40,000 USD. While there will still be an upper bracket and lower bracket at the LAN finals, the team coming from the upper bracket will not receive a map advantage in the BO5 grand finals, only an extra map veto advantage. The LAN finals will be held between November 8-9.
The following is the prize distribution for the top four teams in the tournament:
1. ~ $22,000
2. ~ $10,000
3. ~ $5,000
4. ~ $2,500
Each of the four teams that qualify for the LAN finals will also recieve approximately $2,000 travel support.
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