Yes flipside beat NiP in a best of 3, and so they deserve a reward for doing so

The only thing they truly deserved was their spot in the quarter-finals.

Not according to valve, so you kinda have to learn to cope with this loss

So let me get this straight

1. People are complaining that qualification for a tournament/league is not based on results in other, unaffiliated tournaments/leagues, but only on previous results from the same tournament/league/organization? That's how literally every league/tournament ever has worked.
2. NiP just lost 3 matches out of which they should've won 2, at least one of which they should've won easily, yet got absolutely raped. You can always have a bad day but you don't get anything but sympathy points for that. Imagine if you had 3 bad maps in a final. Tough shit, but you still lost.

You can be able to beat the best team in the world on a good day, if you don't have the consistency to beat a top 50 team every time then you'll have to live with losing a few matches.

Oh well, then I guess that makes it the best system we could possibly come up with ! Seems legit.

I think people are complaining that qualification is based on the results of one speicific tournament that took place a relatively long time ago, but not on any of recent tournament results.

Yeah but what other tournaments are you going to count as a qualifier? If it's not run by you, then you can't enforce your rules. Imagine the shit show if someone were to qualify through a tournament with different rules. That's why that is never done.
Valve is especially strict about this though, even when there's no "danger".

Then there's the problem that more guaranteed spots either reduce to spots up for grabs at a major or the open spots or both.

Also I get why tournaments that happened only 2-3 months prior are preferable to one that happened 6 months ago, but why would those be better than a qualifier practically right before the tournament? I mean if you're looking for recent results that's ideal isn't it? Surely if you performed well all that time it'll be a breeze. And if you start slumping right before a major then why would you deserve a spot? You can't complain about teams not deserving a spot because it was based on a performance that happened "so long ago" but then whine when your favourite teams doesn't qualify and pull the "but they used to be good, they should already have a spot" defense.

NiP = Never in Playoffs 4Head