1. GENERAL PROVISIONS
1.1. A tournament refers to an esports competition between three and five players.
1.2. Each tournament is provided with a unique number (hereinafter referred to as "Season").
1.3. EPC eFootball tournaments are held daily throughout the calendar year.
1.4. The phrase "Calendar Year" refers to the period between January 1 and December 31. Each year consists of twelve months (stages).
1.5. The group's top five players are determined at the end of each month.
1.6. All tournaments are held on the PlayStation gaming console.
1.7. Tournaments can be held in the gaming environment of a licensed version of the football simulator "EA Sports FC 25" from the publisher Electronic Arts (hereinafter "FC25").
1.8. If the tournament is held in a FC25 game environment, participants compete in Kick-Off mode at the Legendary difficulty level.
1.9. Tournaments are open to players over the age of 18. All participants must have the event organisers' proper credentials and approval.
1.10. All tournaments are held at specialized stationery esports venues, and both participants and organizers must comply with all sanitary and hygienic norms.
2. PROCEDURE FOR THE COMPETITION
2.1. As part of the tournament, each participant is assigned to one team with the current composition at the time of the competition, using an online draw.
2.2. The EPC eFootball tournaments are held in a round-robin system, with participants playing in two rounds on an "every man for every man" basis.
2.3. If there are more than five participants wishing to take part in the same tournament, the participants are divided into two groups ("Group A" and "Group B") and play two separate tournaments.
2.4. The result is entered into the tournament statistics by the end of the main time. The winner of the match is also determined within the main game time.
2.5. The term "Playing time" means two halves that consist of ninety units of playing time, which is the equivalent of ten minutes of actual time.
2.6. Additional time awarded by the virtual referees in the game environment may also be counted as part of the regular game time.
2.7. If the match ends with a "Tie" within regular game time, the participants choose the "Accept a Tie" game option without overtime (Golden Goal, Classic, or Penalty Shootout modes).
3. DETERMINING THE WINNER OF THE TOURNAMENT
3.1. Each participant plays two matches against every other participant in the tournament (one match—"at home", and one match—"away").
3.2. Based on the results of the match, the player is awarded points:
a) 3 points for victory
b) 1 point for a tie
c) 0 points for defeat
3.3. If, due to force majeure circumstances (Section 5), it is impossible to hold or finish the match, the participants are awarded 0 points each.
3.4. If the match was interrupted due to technical reasons, the result of the participants at the moment when it was interrupted is entered in the tournament table (section "Goals") and taken into account when determining the winner of the tournament.
3.5. If two participants score an equal number of points, the winner of the tournament, as well as all other places in the tournament table, is distributed as follows:
(a) by the number of goals scored in all meetings held in the tournament.
b) by the difference between goals scored and conceded in all tournament matches.
3.6. The results of all matches are entered into the official tournament statistics, which are updated online.
4. DETERMINING THE TOP FIVE PLAYERS OF THE MONTH
4.1. At the end of each month, the top five players (hereinafter the "Top-5" Rating) are determined among all the participants in the competition.
4.2. Players who have participated in more than thirty tournaments in a month can get into the "Top 5".
4.3. When distributing places in the "Top 5," the following criteria are taken into account:
(a) win percentage per calendar month
(b) by the number of goals scored in all meetings held during the calendar month.
5. FORCE MAJEURE CIRCUMSTANCES
5.1. If a scheduled match cannot be played due to technical problems, the match is cancelled.
5.2. Cancelled matches are not rescheduled; they retain their "Cancelled" status.
5.3. If a match has technical problems and can no longer be played, the match is cancelled. Interrupted matches are not rescheduled; they are kept in "Interrupted" status.
5.4. A match may be resumed in the cases described below, provided that the error was detected before the opening of the score and/or the end of the first half:
a) If the game did not start as scheduled.
b) If the team was selected incorrectly.
c) If the team lineup was misdefined.
d) If the home/away side was chosen incorrectly.
5.5. In other cases, a match like this will be considered cancelled.
5.6. If, due to force majeure circumstances, the declared player can not take part in the match, depending on the circumstances, an early or urgent replacement of the player is carried out. If it is impossible to make a replacement, the tournament is played without the previously declared player.