More than 450 teams have registered in the first round of SEA open qualifiers for the Shanghai Major, including Redemption (ex Arrow Gaming) who got their chance denied by Valve once more.
It seems like Valve stuck with their decision on the entire Arrow Gaming roster and the lifetime ban received in 2014 is still up even though the players have tried to rebrand themselves as Team Redemption. However, the team has managed to register on the FaceIT platform and even play a few rounds until the situation was brought to admins attention.
Not being ready in time for the winter roster lock, MVP.Hot6 had to take the hard path of open qualifiers and unfortunately they exit the competition rather early. They got defeated in the merciless best-of-one gauntlet by team Extremist. MVP’s last option now is to sign up in the second round of SEA open qualifiers to try their luck one more time.
A good surprise was the rejuvenated Rave. The new roster consisting of young SEA talents have reached round 32 and will continue their journey tomorrow when they will face in the first game WU.J.
Team Rave's new roster
Fredrick "f1ed" Fernandez
John "Shiro.ph" Galman
Rafel "Rapy" Polo
Jobert "DoReMoN" De Villa
Kenneth "flysolo" Coloma
Another new promising team has surfaced with these qualifiers, namely Mineski - X, a mix of well known faces including the ex Fnatic Fadil "Kecik Imba" Bin Mohd Raziff and Chan "WinteR" Litt Binn alongside Michael "ninjaboogie" Ross and Joel Chan "XtiNcT" Zhan.
Day two will start on January 4th at 13:00 SGT with the 32 teams left to battle for a spot into the regional qualifiers bracket. All games will be best-of-one up to the semifinals which are best-of-three.
