FlyQuest withdraws from OCE ESL Challenger League to focus on tier-one aspirations

Friday, Jan. 17 | 7:05pm AEDT
Written by Joshua "OnlyJoshin" Warmington

FlyQuest has withdrawn from Oceania's ESL Challenger League for Season 49, following in the footsteps of peers The MongolZ, Wildcard and M80.

There had been some rumblings prior to the withdrawal where team manager Chris “GoMeZ” Orfanellis responded to the Dust2.us article about M80 also withdrawing from the North America ESL Challenger League. GoMeZ mentioned FlyQuest had a similar pull back home where the team needed to be in Europe but had to fly back to Australia for ECL.

We struggle with the same ECL pull each season as well.
— Chris Orfanellis (@GoMeZCSGO) October 20, 2024

FlyQuest president and chief gaming officer Chris “PapaSmithy” Smith later confirmed the team's withdrawal from ECL in a statement to DFRAG, affirming GoMeZ’s previous comments.

He cited similar reasons to M80, who stepped away from North America's ECL to focus on other events and to protect from upset losses where peers could earn valuable Valve Ranking System (VRS) points, thus knocking them down the regional rankings and potentially losing opportunities for other events.

"The Valve Ranking System heavily penalizes any match losses against teams ranked significantly lower than you," PapaSmithy said. "Given the importance or VRS to tier-one invites it's not feasible for us to compete in ECL [in] Australia."

FlyQuest is currently ranked 20th in the global VRS rankings as at Jan. 16.

FlyQuest is currently in Europe for BLAST Bounty, one of several trips the team will make to the continent this year. Photo by Luc Bouchon via ESL

PapaSmithy stated the first half of the calendar is already quite full for FlyQuest, wishing that the VRS system was more flexible or that ECL's format, which features several double best-of-ones, was expanded to best-of-three.

"There's a good story of M80 losing invites purely from losing single maps in ECL, so I think most teams in tier one or on the cusp of tier one will approach this stuff similarly," PapaSmithy concluded.

That's not to say Aussies will miss out on more FlyQuest in the region, with PapaSmithy and the org working on projects to better remain connected with fans at home. "We still want to be held to high standards of using our position as Australia's premier CS team to invest in the future of the Aussie scene," he said.

FlyQuest is set to be replaced by Underground ESC, with ECL Season 49 kicking off on Tuesday, Jan. 21.