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Dota 210 years ago

VG and Newbee pull out of StarLadder, Cloud9 and VP stand-in

Yesterday, a Chinese website reported that Newbee and Vici Gaming were to pull out of the upcoming SLTV LAN finals. Now, the StarLadder admins have confirmed that neither Chinese team will attend the event and will be replaced by Cloud9 and Virtus.pro respectively.

The TI4 finalists Newbee and Vici Gaming have both qualified for the StarLadder Season X LAN finals, after finishing in the top four of the round-robin groupstage and then going through playoff-bracket. These games have been played out weeks ago and so far the public assumed that both teams would attend. Yesterday, a report emerged, stating that both teams declined their participation in the tournament due to safety concerns. Today, StarLadder has released an official statement regarding both teams.

Official statement by VG, provided by StarLadder:

"Because of insufficient time of preparing visa after ESL and unstable political status in Ukraine, after thorough consideration for players' health and safety, we decided to give up on SL10's qualified slot. We apologize to the tournament organizer for the inconvenience, and to all of VG's fans and sponsors. We hope we can have your understanding."

Official statement regarding Newbee, provided by StarLadder:

"Due to the fact that players of Newbee lost their passports, offically retriving it takes too much time to sign Ukraine visa. They have no choice but quit SL10 offline phase, they deeply apologize for the inconvenience to their fans and sponsors, Newbee will perform more excellent games to appreciate people's forgiveness."

Both teams will be replaced by Cloud9 and Virtus.pro, both of which placed 5th and 6th in the online groupstage. Cloud9's participation in StarLadder was not unexpected as the team pulled out of the D2CL playoffs yesterday, considering that both LANs are very close to one another.

Virtus.pro's G also confirmed yesterday in a tweet that he will attend StarLadder.

Regarding the rumors of IAP not being able to attend, the StarLadder admins have confirmed that the team is set to travel to Kiev as soon as their visas have been approved.

Source: Dota2.cga.cn, StarLadder.TV

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