ESL-FACEIT Group SVP talks about teams declining invites

The latest talking point in the Counter-Strike community is how teams are declining qualifier or tournament invites to supposedly prevent themselves from dropping down in the VRS. Imperial FE's recent withdrawal from a BLAST event caught a lot of attention from the community and as usual, the community was divided on their stance towards the matter.

ESL-FACEIT Group's Senior Vice President has taken to X, clarifying how these invite declinations work and how many events can be declined over the course of a particular time period. Ulrich Schulze posted a section from ESL's tournament's guidelines that talks about the requirements to be eligible for the Annual Club Incentive.

His post highlights that teams can opt-out of events they were invited to within a single year and a team can opt-out of three tournaments over the course of two years. When Graham Pitt, the GM of Complexity commented about overlapping qualifiers, Ulrich Schulze responded that a TO had changed their closed qualifier dates without updating the shared calendar.