Cloud9 to Step in for OpTic Gaming at DreamHack Malmo

These are hard days for North American CS:GO team OpTic Gaming. After losing three of their players in a very short period of time, this team received information that they would not be allowed to participate at the DreamHack Malmo that will be held from August 30th to September 3rd. This is yet another hit for this team that had a tremendous success in the competition not that long ago.

However, just like the majority of CS:GO teams that go through a team reconstruction, OpTic Gaming had to do that during the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately for them, they were supposed to participate in two tournaments in the next month but that will not be happening as they have been disqualified from both of those events.

Breaking the Rules

The first of those tournaments is DreamHack Malmo 2017 and even though OpTic Gaming tried to find a solution for their problems, DreamHack firmly held their position and announced yesterday that OpTic will not be competing in Malmo this year. Back when OpTic received an invite for this tournament, they had a complete roster and there were no indications that their team might be falling apart very soon.

Soon after receiving the invite for DreamHack Malmo, Will ‘RUSH’ Wierzba, James ‘hazed’ Cobb, and Tarik Celik announced that they would be stepping down from the team and looking for new opportunities with new CS:GO teams. Considering that DreamHack’s rules state that the team competing in the tournaments needs to have three players from the roster that was invited and since OpTic Gaming is not able to fulfill that rule, they have been disqualified from the tournament.

With only two players left in the team, OpTic had no option but to look for new members of the team. Even if they did not bring in new players, they would not be able to participate at the DreamHack Malmo so this disqualification is not that painful for this North American team.

Cloud9 Stepping In

DreamHack announced that the OpTic’s revoked invite for the tournament will be sent to Cloud9 who were right behind OpTic when the organizers were sending the direct invites. After not receiving the invite for the tournament, Cloud9 decided that they will not be participating in the qualifiers for this tournament because they were held between ESL One Cologne and PGL Major Krakow.

Cloud9 also had a lot of problems with their roster recently but since they were not invited they are not breaking any rules of the competition. In the end, Cloud9 managed to put together a very respectable team that features Tim ‘automatic’ Ta, Will ‘RUSH’ Wirzba, Tarik Celik, Jake ‘Stewie2k’ Yip, and Tyler ‘skadoodle’ Latham.

It will not be an easy tournament for Cloud9 because all the biggest names including Astralis, SK Gaming, Gambit Esports, Immortals, FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, North, Team EnVyUs, Renegades, Mousesports, G2 Esports, and Fnatic will also be participating in the tournament and all of them will have their eyes set on the first place and their share of the $250,000 prize pool.