Team Secret and Evil Geniuses reshuffle their rosters after the disappointing Manila Major. In consequence they both have to fight through the Open Qualifiers for the International.

Puppey at ESL One Manila (© ESL/flickr)

[team secret] and the [evil geniuses] surprised with roster changes after dropping out of the Manila Major. [universe] will return to EG after just two months with Secret and in exchange [bulba] will take his spot in Secrets offlane.

This has some weird consequences beyond the simple roster changes: Both teams lose their invites to The International 2016. Sure, no team has been invited yet, but you could take it for granted that EG and Secret would have gotten an invite to Dotas most prestigious tournament of the year. After all both teams hold the two top spots of the Dota 2 World Ranking for nine consecutive months now.

Team Secret and EG have to fight through the open qualifiers

But Valve has a clear policy concerning invites: Rosters were locked at March 27 until when they had to be registered at Dota.com. Any changes made after that date result in no invites to any Valve tournaments. As Team Secret already stated in their blog, this will also apply for the main qualifiers to the International – meaning that both EG and Secret will have to fight their way through the open qualifiers. It will be a long way for both of them to Seattle though the open qualifiers shouldn’t pose a threat to either team. The main qualifiers might though.

Team Secret and Evil Geniuses ended the Manila Major an rank 13 losing to [team empire] and [vici gaming reborn] in the first round of the Loser Bracket each. It’s the worst performance at a Valve Major for either team.