As a result, some teams were unable to participate in their group tournaments at all (because they were stuck in other tournaments), while others were registered but were no longer active on the device when their tournament started, meaning they were unable to switch over and had no chance. For other teams, however, everything went normally (except for the long delay), meaning they fought, invested time, and thus qualified for the finals—or lost fair and square. Many teams invested many valuable items, such as protein boosts, before the supposed start of the group stage in order to be as well prepared as possible.
Unfortunately, for a long time we were also unsure how best to proceed under these circumstances. That’s why we initially announced a repeat, until we realized that this would only be fair if we reimbursed the exact value of the items invested, and that would have been an insurmountable manual effort given the 128 qualified participants. Incidentally, this also applied to the 55 teams that were unable to register in their groups; they would also have been entitled to a refund.
Therefore, after lengthy and controversial discussions with many justifiably angry players, we decided to skip the rest of the group stage and continue directly with the final on August 23.
However, there was initially a misunderstanding: some of the players involved in the discussion believed that EVERYONE – including teams that had played their respective group tournaments and been eliminated – should be eligible to participate in the final tournament. However, I think that would have been unfair to those teams that had qualified on merit – their performance and the items they had invested would then have been basically wasted, giving them good reason to demand a refund. At the same time, teams that had not invested much (except time) would have been qualified. So we would have been confronted with individual (and justified) refund claims again.
Knowing that no solution satisfactory to everyone is conceivable in the face of such a catastrophic crash, Ludetis has therefore decided on a compromise:
all remaining group access passes will be converted into final passes (i.e., all teams that were unable to participate in group tournaments are qualified for the final tournament). This has already been announced in the news for several days.
Teams that were registered for their group tournament but did not actively play can contact us and, after review, will also receive the final pass as compensation (this has already happened with four teams).
It was very difficult to come up with this solution, and we know that not everyone is happy with it. We can assure you that no one is more upset about the disappointing outcome than we are, because we bear the responsibility and want to offer you a great gaming experience, and unfortunately we did not succeed this time, resulting in justified complaints.
We therefore apologize profusely and promise that we will not only closely monitor the final tournament to resolve any issues immediately if necessary, but also that we will take appropriate action with a view to next year. In addition, there will be a special event with particularly generous rewards after the World Cup.
We wish all qualified teams an exciting final tournament on August 23!