With great disappointment, we announce the official closure of the Reach platform for the foreseeable future. The league has been offline for weeks as we evaluated our response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but continuing to run the platform is no longer possible. ESL has confirmed that the Academy event will not take place in 2020, and any future plans for Reach or the Academy are on hold.

This news is hard for us to deliver, as everyone on the team is a big Dota fan. When we were presented with the opportunity to help develop the competitive scene, we jumped at it. The ESL Academy was intended to be a great place for aspiring Dota players to hone their skills and network with professionals in a live setting.

In late October 2019, we launched the beta with our first batch of players. The response was immense, with hundreds of high-level players, including pros, joining the platform daily. We refined the system, added administrators, and built a loyal player base competing fiercely for the title. We launched just in time for the Christmas break, when students would be out of school and could focus on the season.

Throughout the next several months, we saw over 3,000 matches played by over 4,500 players in our two supported regions. We awarded more than $85,000 in prize money and witnessed multiple top Reach players make their way into open qualifiers for big events. Despite our efforts to improve the platform, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly and significantly impacted our ability to host live events.

We held off on announcing anything due to coordination difficulties between the two companies. Unfortunately, Reach and the Academy draft program will not continue in the foreseeable future. This has been disappointing for us, as we put a lot of effort into bringing this league to Dota players. Without a live presence to spotlight amateur players, we lose some of the value we aimed for.

The potential of future seasons for Reach and the ESL Academy is being discussed once things get back to normal. We hope to continue the league in 2021 when Dota players can return to stages worldwide. For now, we thank all our players for their participation, our admins for their tireless work, and our dedicated engineers who built, refined, and fixed the bots and website that fueled Reach. We wish our players the best in their journey to professional play and hope that any small part we played with Reach may take them to the next step.