The fourth installment of the Esports Championship Series league ended last night, and the eight contenders for the offline finals were decided after two months of competition.
Cloud9, OpTic Gaming, Team Liquid, and Luminosity Gaming finished in the top four for North America. Luminosity Gaming’s win over Renegades in round 30 of Cache last night put them ahead of Brazilian counterpart SK Gaming and North American juggernaut Team Liquid, essentially removing SK from the qualification pool with a fifth place finish.
This will be the first time that SK will miss a big CS:GO league finals in 2017—but them not qualifying is arguably due in part to their hectic event schedule in the past two months.
Related: CS:GO comes to Cancun, Mexico for the ECS season four finals
For the European region, Fnatic, FaZe Clan, Mousesports, and Astralis placed first through fourth in the 10-team region. Astralis was able to reach third place with Jacob “pimp” Winneche standing in, despite star AWPer Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz’s medical leave. Their final two wins over GODSENT put them ahead of recent IEM Oakland winners Ninjas in Pyjamas—who placed fifth in the region—by a 23 round differential.
The bottom two teams for each regional standings, however, will be sent to the ECS Promotion League to compete for a returning slot in the main League. GODSENT and Heroic were relegated for the European region, while Ghost Gaming and Immortals were demoted in North America. Immortals forfeited their entire season due to the organization’s complete roster revamp.
The ECS season four finals will play out from Dec. 15 to 17 in Cancun, Mexico, hosting an eight-team competition for a $750,000 prize pool.
