NS discussed PGL’s potential plans to make its tournaments a counterpart to the DPC for The International

They announced the invites to The International there. Spirit didn’t receive an invite, possibly due to a last-minute substitution (though that might not be the reason at all—we’ll discuss this further below). Parivision also didn’t get a slot, which is particularly surprising, so they’ll have to go through qualifiers.

Qualifiers are a whole other story. Western and Eastern Europe have been merged into a single region and given 4 slots. So we’ll have Spirit, PV, Na`Vi, VP, Mouz, and a number of other strong teams there—it’s shaping up to be a pretty solid lineup (WE’RE PLANNING A STARPERHUB FOR THIS EVENT).
They decided not to combine North and South America into a single region xdd. It’s probably all about ping, though who knows—maybe it’s a global Masonic conspiracy to push Bignum into all the top LANs on the planet.

Now the arguments about the invites are 100% going to start—why this team and not that one, and so on.
And really, why are they exactly like this? Let’s say PV won the last DreamLeague, i.e., the last major tournament before the invites, and Spirit also showed a good result there. And anyway, according to the EPT system (the very system that includes ESL/DreamLeague), PV is in 2nd place, and Spirit is in 6th. The EPT is the most objective system over the course of the season, since everyone plays in ESL/DL, no one skips matches, there are almost no substitutions for anyone, and there are plenty of tournaments in this system—meaning the sample size is good. So why didn’t PV get an invite?

There’s a rumor/inside scoop/conspiracy theory that PGL plans to take over the tournament system tied to The International, i.e., make their tournaments a sort of DPC-season equivalent so that everyone is required to play there—roughly speaking(EPT for Riyadh qualifiers, PGL for Int), and those who don’t will not get a slot at Int, and this will happen as early as next year. You decide for yourselves how much to believe this info, but the fact is that based on the results of the three PGLs (held this year), PV actually trails BB, Yandex, and Aurora—and apparently, they didn’t want to give more than three slots to Eastern Europe. So, maybe PGL has already taken everything over; they just forgot to tell anyone.

Yeah, it’s also sad that May is already ending, the invites have been handed out, there’s less than three months until The International, and there’s no sign of any event or Major on the horizon :( Maybe something will come up, but somehow there’s no hope for anything interesting—DIKOVINKA KVARTERO—that’s our event for the ages, apparently. <...>