DreamLeague Changes the Format of the Qualifiers for the DreamLeague Season 8

Yesterday, we wrote about DreamLeague making a huge mistake by specifying that the qualifiers for the last Dota 2 Major tournament of the season will be held in only four regions. The response from the community was strong as many members criticized DreamLeague and Valve especially for not respecting their own rules for the competition.

Today, DreamLeague announced the changes to the format of the competition and it seems that the pressure from the community was too big for DreamLeague and Valve to ignore. Because of that, many teams will have the opportunity to fight for their place in the main event of the last Dota 2 Major of this season and the last tournament before the introduction of the new tournament system in Dota 2 competitions.

Updated Format

A couple of days ago Valve and DreamLeague announced that the qualifiers for this tournament will be held in North/South America, China, Europe/CIS, and Southeast Asia. However, Valve rules and the guidelines for Dota 2 tournaments state that each major and minor tournament will have to organize qualifiers in all six regions and that was the reason for the huge backlash caused by this decision.

DreamLeague decided to put all the teams from North and South America into one pot and all teams from Europe and CIS into another pot. If this format was used, it would mean that there is a huge possibility that neither team from South American and CIS region will be participating in the competition this year which is a terrible thing.

Initially, Valve and DreamLeague did not comment on that issue which made the community even more furious with this decision. Nobody has a problem with the introduction of the new format of the competition but what everybody feels bothered with is the fact that the new format was going against the rules that Valve introduced themselves for the upcoming Dota 2 competitions.

Slight Miscommunications

Today, however, DreamLeague announced that they have changed the format of the qualifiers and that miscommunication was the main reason for the initial problem. With these changes, each of six regions will host open qualifiers. After that, CIS and European region will merge together and the closed qualifiers will be held in five regions.

However, DreamLeague has announced that each region is guaranteed to have at least one representative at the final major of the season. The closed stage of the qualifiers will be played in the round robin format. If it happens that top four teams from European region are actually all four from Europe, only top three teams will be heading to the main event while the best CIS team in the round robin will be filling the last position for EU region.

The same applies vice versa and with those changes, DreamLeague has secured a representation of every region for this tournament. On the other hand, another bone of content was the combining of North and South American qualifiers and with these changes, they will be split and each region will have their own qualifiers and representatives at the DreamLeague Season 8.