This change apparently sees the date be pushed back from the initial date of June 3rd, the day of the DreamHack Austin finals, to next Saturday, 2 days before first playday of the new season, on June 16th. It frees teams up to change players between them and other PL/CL teams for the remaining 3 days as long as each team retains three out of five players from their previous season’s roster.
This comes after a severe miscommunication from an ESL admin meant teams which had attended DreamHack Austin were told they had an extension to the deadline. According to the teams, the deadline was moved from Sunday the 3rd of June to Friday the 8th of June.
Unfortunately, the top ESL administration for Rainbow Six later ruled that this extension was not authorised. This lead to many players and teams being unable to complete their teams just a week before Pro League was scheduled to begin.
The most high profile of these changes was with the player Rampy who, after believing he had an extra week before roster lock came into effect, left his team of Noble eSports to move to Spacestation Gaming.
However, he and his team were then told this wasn't allowed for the team was past the deadline date, effectively leaving him out of either team and with SSG down a player until the Paris Major transfer window. This was despite an ESL admin assisting SSG in circumventing the software roster lock on ESL Play in order to add Rampy to the SSG team.
This led to a large-scale community backlash with #FreeRampy, as it was seen as was unfair to punish the player and team for an apparent miscommunication error on ESL’s part. Fortunately for the team and player, ESL has decided to extend the roster lock, allowing roster changes until the day Pro League begins. This comes after the announcement that the Pro League would be delayed by a week due to technical issues with the game, thereby making the current period still technically “pre-season”.
Going forward, this will help teams from across all regions from completing their desired rosters. Hopefully, this will create stronger teams and have us see some high-quality games when Season 8 begins on Monday.
Banner image background by Peter Chau
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