After failing twice to get a visa to the US, Empire has announced that yoky. will not be participating with them in MLG Columbus meaning that they will be playing with a stand in.
On the issue, Empire has not announced a stand-in for their offlane player Maxim 'Yoky.-' Kim in the upcoming MLG Columbus lan finals taking place on the 10th of April. Jimmy 'DeMoN' Ho seems like the most likely stand-in for the team due to the low probability of Empire getting a Russian speaking player to play with them in the little time they have left, DeMoN's previous experience standing in for Asus.Polar and his fame for his good performance standing in for teams in NA lans.
Sadly @yokydota visa application got denied 2nd time and we will play with a standin at upcoming @MLG event pic.twitter.com/QbbtQqppih
— Team Empire (@team_empire) March 31, 2015
This is the second time a Russian player have failed to get a visa to the US in time this year. Previously, in the Dota 2 League Season 5 lan finals, VP.Polar's Ilya 'Lil-_-HaRDy' Ilyuk failed to get a visa in time for the event, resulting in DeMoN standing in. With the reoccurrence of this issue and other teams facing similar visa issues such as Rave who needed to pull out of Starladder 12 in order to ensure that they have enough time to secure a US visa, Valve and other tournament organizers might be prompted to contact their invited teams earlier to give them more time for US visa applications.
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