These changes come late to the Dreamhack schedule, as the tournament is scheduled to be begin tomorrow, November 28th. However, it seems that the organizers have quickly found replacements, as they posted this on their website:

“Due to late cancellations from teams like Copenhagen Wolves, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Ultra Vires – we have replaced them with Team Property, Tricked esports and LowLandLions. The teams were selected with a small private qualifier…”

These new team will join the current participants as well as two other teams to be determined by event qualifier.

In a post on Facebook by team manager Matin “Deficio” Lynge, Ninjas in Pyjamas confirmed they will not be participating in the tournament. Deficio cited a “lack of practice time on the new 3.14 patch” as the reason for the team’s decision. Dreamhack, just like the recently concluded IEM Cologne, will be played on the 3.13 patch, and Deficio stated that the team felt as though playing on the older version of the client would be a “waste of 4 practice days”. Instead, NiP will be focusing wholly on the upcoming European LCS relegation matches, scheduled to run in mid-December, which will be played on the newer 3.14 patch.

Copenhagen Wolves top-laner Joey “Youngbuck” Steltenpool also mentioned his teams absence on Facebook, but did not go into details, only briefly mentioning the team was “cancelling Dreamhack” before getting “back to working harder than ever”.

Team Ultra Vires has been silent over the decision, but it is not hard to imagine that they are also in the midst of practicing for the upcoming relegation tournament.

A notable exception all the LCS ready teams leaving Dreamhack is SK Gaming, who despite facing relegation themselves are still on the Dreamhack schedule and seem to have no intention of backing out.

The Dreamhack Groups:

Group A
Team Property
tRICKED eSports

TBD (qualifier)

Group B
LowLandLions
SK Gaming
Storm Games Clan
TBD (qualifier)

Sources: Facebook (Deficio, YoungBuck) and Dreamhack

Massive Schedule Changes Strike Dreamhack Winter