Evil Geniuses received an invitation to Epic League but refused to participate
For the last 2 days, on the forums and Reddit threads, the public has been discussing the format of the closed qualifiers for Epic League, specifically, changing the tournament system on the go. Today the famous Dota 2 commentator, ??Vitalii "v1lat" Volochai, criticized the precedent that the organizer has added an extra grand-final right during the tournament and a team that didn't participate in the closed qualifiers for Epic League was invited to participate in it.
To this, the tournament operator Epic League published a letter in which it explained this situation.
Since ??EG refused to participate in the tournament, its slot in the first division was given to ??NAVI, which previously had to play with second place in the closed qualifiers for it. All participants were notified about it before the tournament began. Another team was invited to replace ??NAVI, which had not previously taken part in the closed qualifier.
Thus, the teams participating in the closed qualifiers knew about this extra final. The organizer decided initially not to inform the community about it.