Filipino DotA 2 Pro Team Removed From Plane By PH Immigrations

April 06 15:33 2015 by Alexei Rivera Print This Article

Despite being a huge source of hope and admiration for our eSports scene here in the Philippines, members of Dota 2 team “Rave” (consisting of Filipino players) have been kicked out of a plane headed to South Korea by our own Philippine Immigrations. After winning nearly 6 Million Pesos (by placing 5th) at the Asian Championship and travelling in and out several countries to compete in, immigrations officers are now claiming they do not have the right documentation to play in international eSports Tournaments.

Mark “Cast” Pilar, Djardel “Chrissy” Mampusti, and Ryo “ry0yr” Hasegawa returned to the Philippines to apply for US VISAs so they could attend MLG, a major US tourney. Unfortunately, they couldn’t make the deadline and decided to return to South Korea to train for ESL and Redbull LAN – and this flight in question was where they got pulled out of the airplane.

Having been able to go in and out of South Korea and several countries before, this is definitely unusual. Thankfully, Senator Bam Aquino is on our side – he’s asking for an explanation on why our players were not allowed to leave. One theory posted by Mineski.net, says that Immigrations is looking for an Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC) for these players – a document that was supposedly not needed for their E-6 “Entertainer” VISAs. Whether or not they needed these documents is probably a moot point – if they were able to play internationally before, why were they allowed to play before and not now?

Sadly, this is just another step back for our eSports scene. We hope Rave can get over this issue soon and continue to make us proud.