SAW player Cristopher "MUTiRiS" Fernandes shared his thoughts on the cancellation of open qualifiers for CS2 Majors. In an interview with eScoreNews, the Portuguese esports player reflected on the reasons why the developers had to make this decision.
"I think I understand Valve’s decision. The developers want to protect the teams. But in a way, they’ve destroyed the magic of Majors, where anyone could qualify. Of course, it’s not easy; we’ve been through it. We’re a good team now, but in the past, we had to fight hard for those slots.
I feel like the developers want to protect players because they can’t fully deal with the cheater problem. For a team like ours, it’s tough to play qualifiers when your opponents might include a cheater or some unknown player suddenly making impossible moves. It’s really frustrating. So, I think they decided, ‘Let’s create our ranking and just invite teams based on that.’ I don’t like it, but I understand the decision."
Fernandes' team is currently competing at IEM Cologne 2024. SAW defeated FaZe 2-1 in the first round of the playoffs and advanced to the semi-finals, where they will face Vitality.