Streamer Rostislav "rostislav_999" Protasenya shared why his team didn’t participate in the open qualifiers for The International 2024 in Dota 2. According to him, the team started to fall apart five hours before the tournament began, with some players refusing to compete alongside the content creator.
"People started backing out five hours before the qualifiers. What a total cringe! I was really upset because I believed we could have shown something at this tournament. We really could have displayed some level of skill…
I still don’t understand what happened. The day before, the team was more or less set. Then people started dropping out. What kind of nonsense is this? That’s not how you do things. I don’t care much, but it’s a bit disappointing. I get the impression that many didn’t want to play with me, fearing they’d ruin their reputation. I’m sure of it.
Someone messaged me: ‘Rostyan, we have to negotiate with players because of you to get them to play with you.’ I replied: ‘Who’s asking you to negotiate? Show me these players who don’t have a team for the qualifiers and don’t want to play with me.’ Who are these clowns? I never found out," said Rostislav "rostislav_999" Protasenya.
Initially, rostislav_999 was assembling a team with Bogdan "Iceberg" Vasilenko and Igor "iLTW" Filatov. They struggled to find an offlaner for the roster. The open qualifiers took place in Eastern Europe from June 3 to June 6.