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Timur "Ahilles" Kulmukhambetov commented on the withdrawal of Power Rangers from the tournament in favor of Vici Gaming at PGL Wallachia Season 7 for Dota 2 and called it an alarming symptom of the state of the scene.
The main "pain point," according to the scout, is visa issues. Power Rangers is a team assembled from former Runa players. They won the Eastern Europe closed qualifier and secured a slot at the tournament. However, the team never made it to the LAN stage. The organization or the players themselves declined to participate, and their spot was taken by Vici Gaming, which had previously lost in the final of the Asian qualifier to the team Nemesis.
Initially, it looked like a financial problem: flights to tournaments are not always fully covered, and accommodation and related expenses fall on the shoulders of the club. However, a clarification later emerged — PGL was ready to cover the tickets, but the players faced visa difficulties. According to Ahilles, "the visa center strangled the hard workers."
Ahilles noted that esports is going through a difficult period in 2026. Even during the COVID years, there were more interested investors and organizations willing to support rosters. Now, however, many teams exist without a permanent sponsor. Power Rangers is an example of a "working" team capable of qualifying for tier-1 tournaments but lacking a financial safety net.
Various teams and players have faced similar difficulties in recent years:
- Eastern European rosters regularly experience difficulties obtaining Schengen visas for tournaments in Romania, Germany, and Denmark.
- South American teams face lengthy application processing times when traveling to Europe and North America.
- Chinese players periodically miss tournaments in the USA due to difficulties with work visas.
- In CS2 and Dota 2, it is not uncommon for players to compete with stand-ins at major LAN events because the main roster did not have time to complete the paperwork.
Such situations have already led to last-minute substitutions at tournaments like ESL and PGL. Sometimes organizers have been accommodating and changed the schedule, but more often teams have had to urgently find a replacement.
Ahilles predicts an alarming trend that foreshadows the emergence of teams that will purposefully "farm" online tournaments (CCT, EPL, and other leagues) but avoid LAN events even after successful qualification.
If the financial burden and visa barriers persist, the tier-1 scene risks becoming more closed. Only organizations with stable funding and developed legal support will be able to afford participation in major tournaments. For young rosters, this means a slowdown in career growth.
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