The winner of the UK Red Bull Solo Q 1v1 League of Legends final, Enes ‘AKEN’ Akguel, has spoken to Esports News UK about his unfortunate omission from the world final this weekend.
AKEN says that after his win at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London, where Red Bull told him and members of the press he had qualified for the world final. However, a format change was made a few weeks before the world final, in light of the situation changing due to Covid and AKEN was asked to take part in another qualifier, online and off-stream.
Organisers Freaks 4U had to make a last-minute change, as it wasn’t possible at the BMW Welt venue in Munich to have as many players taking part from different country qualifiers. The decision was made to have an additional regional playoffs round and include the UK winner within that, as well as players from other countries that were supposed to have a direct invite.
This meant several winners of European tournaments had to fight for their previously secured spot in the final. AKEN narrowly lost the semi-final in game five and lost his world final spot.
“I was really disappointed to be honest,” AKEN told Esports News UK. “Because I was already preparing for the world final, which is a completely different format and meta because of the Howling Abyss map, but Red Bull was like ‘hey sorry, because of corona you don’t get a direct spot anymore and you have to play another tournament’.
“All in all, I was really really disappointed with how they organised and communicated everything after the UK final in London, considering that was a really nice experience. It went downhill after that, unfortunately, and what they did was questionable. The world final in Munich meant a lot to me – I grew up there and the roots of my esport journey started developing there. And in the end it looks like the world final spot was just taken away.
“Red Bull SoloQ is still an amazing concept and even though I mentioned a lot of things here that went wrong, I really enjoyed everything up to London to the fullest.”
“The world final in Munich meant a lot to me – I grew up there and the roots of my esport journey started developing there. And in the end it looks like the world final spot was just taken away.”
Enes ‘AKEN’ Akguel
AKEN also said there were communication issues, with details of the added tournament not sent to players in ample time. AKEN says organisers wanted to share play-in details one week before the start date, but these ended up arriving 24 hours before the matches started.
“If I was at least told details in time I could’ve prepared better and a lot more, which I believe should have qualified me,” AKEN added. “Not a single deadline they’ve given us was true – they kept delaying details further and further, even to the point where I voluntarily helped the admins organise the tournament.
“Because I did my research on my opponents, I knew who was gonna qualify for the world final. And when I asked about the bracket and when it was finally going to be released, they didn’t know which players were going to participate [in the new off-stream tournament].”
AKEN said he ended up talking to the admin at Challengermode, which handled tournament brackets for the new tournament, and passed them information, so that the admin could reach out to the correct players and quickly create the bracket. He also tried to get some reasoning from Freaks 4U but said he didn’t receive an answer.
The UK final brackets were apparently on the Toornament platform.
Esports News UK reached out to Red Bull, Freaks 4U and Challengermode to learn more about the situation. We’ll update this article if receive a further official comment.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
