After receiving backlash from the vast majority of the Dota 2 community, ESL have looked to appease everyone at the upcoming Katowice 2018 event.
It was barely a week ago that ESL released their schedule for the upcoming Katowice Major – and along with it, came the reaction from both Dota 2 fans and personalities alike. The foremost of these complaints was about ticketing prices and general cost of a 2-day event when the audience is only getting to see a maximum of four Dota 2 series from the entire tournament. Alongside this was the ESLs problems from a few weeks prior, linked to their deal with Facebook as their new streaming platform – and their banning and removal of any stream outside of their own. The full story on ESL’s community backlash can be found here.
However, while it might be a small effort, ESL have shown (via Reddit) that they are attempting to listen to the community – and have added a 3rd and 4th place play-off series to the Katowice Major main stage. The best-of-three series will take place on Sunday February 25th prior to the grand finals - 11am CET. The teams taking part in the play-off will also be fighting for a bigger share of the prizepool and significantly more Dota 2 Pro Circuit Points than the team which they vanquish. For the most part, the community seem to be appreciative of ESL’s attempts to give us more and their efforts are not going unnoticed.
ESL One Katowice Major
The ESL One Katowice Major will take place on February 20th-25th at the Spodek Arena in Katowice, Poland with a total of 16 teams entering the battle for the $1,000,000 prize pool and 1500ESL One Katowice 2018 format:
Qualifiers and invites
-Sixteen teams: Eight invites and eight teams from regional qualifiers:
-One from each region China, Southeast Asia, South America, and CIS
-Two from Europe and two spots from North America (one through the NA Last Chance Qualifier)
Groups
-Groups were drawn on February 7th
-Group Stage will be held from February 20th to the 23rd:
-Two eight team, double-elimination groups
-Top teams from each group advance directly to the semifinals of the playoffs
-2nd and 3rd placed teams advance to the quarterfinals of the playoffs
Playoffs
-Playoffs will be played between February 23rd and 25th
-Single Elimination brackets
-All series are best-of-three
-3rd and 4th place playoff will be held prior to the Grand Final on the 25th
-Grand Finals are best-of-five TI8 qualifying points.
ESL One Katowice Major teams:
Virtus.pro
Team Secret
Team Liquid
Evil Geniuses
Mineski
Vici Gaming
Natus Vincere
Newbee
Team Kinguin
OG
Effect
compLexity Gaming
Infamous
LGD Gaming
Fnatic
OpTic Gaming
images courtesy of ESL Dota 2 Twitter
