Ninjas In Pyjamas To Make Dota 2 Region Change

Ever since joining the competitive Dota 2 scene, Ninjas in Pyjamas have always competed in the European region. Upon making their debut back in 2015, the boys featured a full Swedish line-up, but eventually changed a couple of rosters throughout their professional years. As far as changing regions, they have not really tried doing so until now.

The team’s previous season did not really see them winning, but it was not necessarily bad since they qualified for The International 2019 via Dota Pro Circuit points. For the most part of NiP's career, the team has always had to take the Minor into a Major route. It was pretty apparent that the European region became the most stacked one last year, making it even more difficult to make it through the qualifiers to get a spot at Majors. Despite that, some of the biggest competitors in the region decided to skip the first Major of the new competitive season.

Ninjas in Pyjamas started with a new roster courtesy of team captain and former Evil Geniuses player, Peter “ppd” Dager. Unfortunately, they still fell short in the first round of the qualifiers; hence, they needed to find their way back to the game through Dota Summit Season 11, which is the very first Minor of the 2019-2020 Dota Pro Circuit season.

The Dota 2 team also jumped into the year-long battle leading to The International 10 right from the start. They were present in Rotterdam last week, at DreamLeague Season 12, a non-DPC event where they finished in the top three. From there, they went to ESL One Hamburg, and so far they managed to pass the group stages. Sad to say, the boys were not able to secure an upper bracket start for the playoffs, forcing them to be one series away from elimination.

Upon their arrival in Hamburg, NiP’s two supports, ppd and Malthe “Biver” Winther, sat down with Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner and openly talked about the team’s plan to make a region swap.

“I wouldn’t say that we are identified with any sort of region. I feel like this is kind of how it’s been these last couple of years for most of the North American-European teams,” said ppd, who now has a roster made of three NA and two EU players. “We are planning to play in the NA qualifiers for the remainder of the season, so I guess now we are a NA team, but we have some EU roots for sure,” he added.