by With IEM Brazil closed qualifiers taking place across Europe from February 9-11, the need for servers and online gameplay to be at their absolute best is a non-negotiable, but that has not been the case.
The European closed qualifiers for the $250,000 CS:GO tournament has been plagued by persistent tech issues, affecting teams like ENCE, Bad News Eagles, BIG and Sprout.
BIG, ENCE and Sprout lost their opening matches to lower-ranked teams, with players reporting that the servers were lagging and the ESEA client was crashing.
The technical issues in the BIG vs Sprout series were so bad that the teams managed only six rounds of play in an hour.
Players from all teams involved didn’t hold back when they displayed their displeasure on social media, with two ENCE players — Pavle “maden” Boskovic and Marco “Snappi” Pfeffer — posting on their Twitter accounts.
“Two days in a row getting huge lags on three guys because of ESEA client,” maden said.
“They don’t want to provide us good servers or fix this bug, and that also don’t let us play without the client, we lost full ecos, antiecos, (and) many other rounds because of it.”
We are 3 bo3s, 2 days in a row getting huge lags on 3 guys because of ESEA client, and they for 2 days dont wanna provide us good servers or fix this bug, and they also dont let us play without the client, we lost full ecos, antiecos, many other rounds cus of it
— ENCE maden (@madennCS) February 9, 2023
Players lagging out , esea client crashing , played 6 rounds in one hour , gotta love it ??
— Tarlea Laurentiu (@lauNXcs_) February 8, 2023
Another professional player, commenting on maden’s Twitter thread, declared that ESEA would “never” make a public comment to address the issue.
However, ESEA apologised to Snappi and said it was working on getting everything fixed “as soon as possible”.
Sorry for the continued issues. We are working on getting everything fixed as soon as possible
— ESEA (@ESEA) February 8, 2023
With all of the problems with the ESEA servers, and with teams losing crucial rounds on their way to series losses, the legitimacy of the qualifiers are now under fire from many teams and players.
9INE, world number 33, were the first team to qualify for IEM Brazil, with HONORIS and BIG set to play the last series of the closed qualifier at 3:30pm CET on Friday, February 10, for the second and final spot up for grabs.
