Beyond The Summit and Alliance have announced they will no longer be working with the Dota 2 Champion’s League (D2CL) as of March 1 due to the recent conflict happening between Ukraine and Russia.
Beyond The Summit’s decision follows renowned Ukrainian organization Natus Vincere (Na’Vi) announcement that they were cutting ties with ESforce Holding on Tuesday. According to Na’Vi’s statement, ESforce Holding “publicly denies the horror that is now happening in Ukraine.”
— NAVI (@natusvincere) March 1, 2022
ESforce Holding is the company that owns Epic Esports Events, which owns EPICENTER and the D2CL. Since Na’Vi made their initial statement regarding ESforce Holding, Beyond The Summit have followed suit and announced they would discontinue their English coverage of the D2CL and their Russian language coverage of their own Beyond The Summit Pro Series 10 tournament. In the same statement, they condemned the invasion of Ukraine and linked ways to support humanitarian efforts below their announcement.
— BTS Dota (@BTSdota) March 1, 2022
Alliance is another Dota organization that has officially announced that they will not participate in D2CL. They list the same problems Beyond The Summit had with participating in the tournament. In their statement, Alliance state they can no longer participate in the D2CL due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
— Alliance (@theAllianceGG) March 1, 2022
The fallout of Na’Vi’s condemnation has also spread through to the GAMERS GALAXY: Dota 2 Invitational Series Dubai 2022 tournament. Virtus.Pro published a lengthy statement that claimed the team was threatened with disqualification. The reasoning had to do with their affiliation with ESforce Holding.
“The orgs (organizations) of GAMERS GALAXY: Dota 2 Invitational Series Dubai 2022 gathered the VP players, who arrived in Dubai by Nigma Galaxy SEA invitation, to enforce an ultimatum upon them,” The statement read. “It goes like this: ‘Either your club issues a public statement regarding the situation in Ukraine or you get dropped from the tournament.’”
The GAMERS GALAXY Dota 2 Invitational schedule still has Virtus.Pro set to play in their match against Nigma Galaxy SEA in the first round of the group stages.
