Today, it became known that ESL, the largest tournament operator in Counter-Strike, released a major update to its rules for its team rankings. One of the most significant new developments is that the CIS region will no longer exist.

This region now falls under Europe. And this change comes just two years after the brutal war in the heart of Eurasia.

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Especially for our readers, we've highlighted the main changes awaiting us in 2024 in a format convenient for you. But let's start with the introductory speech from ESL:

Since the introduction of the ESL World Ranking, we've made several changes to account for feedback, observations on how everything unfolds in practice, and changes in the ever-evolving Counter-Strike ecosystem. Today, we announce an update that we believe will lead to a fairer and more convenient ESL World ranking. Although we're announcing the update today, it's important to note that the update (and, accordingly, its rules) will only take effect on March 6, 2024. Why so? Due to some fundamental changes we are making in this update, the ranking would have been significantly different if we applied these changes today. Given that several important dates for the ESL World Ranking for various events are approaching soon, we want to give teams and players enough time to adapt before the next set of invitations to our live tournaments and qualifiers. Some exceptions to the above are made: some changes will be implemented and take effect immediately.

What changes are taking effect right now?

Regional coefficients in the ESL World Ranking have been changed to better reflect the current strength and capabilities of regions, as well as to protect strong regional teams from competition with less successful teams that often participate in local competitions. Changes to the coefficients are as follows:

• For Asia, an increase from 4.5% to 5% 
• For North America, a decrease from 26% to 20% 
• For Oceania, a decrease from 9.5% to 8% 
• For South America, an increase from 7% to 14%

Additionally, the number of key teams in North America has been reduced from 10 to 8, reflecting the decreasing problem of the absence of leading teams in local tournaments.

Also, the CIS region no longer exists and all teams will now compete in EU:

The European (EU) and CIS (CIS) regions are combined for more accurate tournament assessment. Previously, they were separated only to comply with Valve's competition format.

Changes that will take effect on March 6, 2024:

The team evaluation model in the ESL World Ranking now combines player and team factors. Roster changes, occurring no more than once every 120 days, will no longer automatically lower a team's ranking.

This reduces the negative impact of frequent roster changes. In addition, the method of recalculating team points when significant changes occur in the roster has been refined, now taking into account various aspects such as team composition, skill difference, and experience of playing together.

It's worth noting that the first ESL championship in 2024 will be IEM Katowice 2024, which starts on February 3, 2024.