Valve has made significant changes to the rules of CS2 tournaments, which relate to obtaining invites, allocating slots between regions, and using the Valve Regional Standings (VRS) rating system. These innovations will affect the tournament scene and the process of selecting teams for major championships.

The main changes in the new rules

Restrictions on Wildcard invites

Now, only those teams with at least three players in the top 8 of the Valve rankings or finalists of tournaments of the same level within the last 6 months can receive Wildcard invitations. This rule has already affected Ninjas in Pyjamas - due to the presence of JACKZ in the roster, the team no longer meets the requirements for a Wildcard invite.

Moving from Tier-2 to Tier-1 via Wildcard

Valve has simplified the way to get from Tier-2 to Tier-1 stage: from now on, a team that wins a Tier-2 tournament will be able to get an invitation to a Tier-1 or Tier-2 tournament. Previously, this required winning a Tier-1 tournament.

Regional division of invites

Tournament organizers can now distribute slots not only by main regions, but also by subregions:

• Two American invites can be divided separately for North and South America.
• Asian slots can be divided between Oceania, Western and Eastern Asia.

Use of the current rating

Tournament operators should use the latest updated version of the Valve rankings to distribute invites. Previously, it was possible to use the last month's rating as a basis, which opened up the possibility of manipulation.

Mandatory VRS for seeding

All tournaments must use Valve Regional Standings (VRS ) to seed teams. However, ESL received an exception for the EPL, which will use its own team allocation system.

How will this affect the CS2 scene?

These changes are intended to make the process of receiving invites more transparent and eliminate situations where teams receive invitations without significant results. On the other hand, it will be easier for teams playing at the Tier-2 level to make their way to major tournaments.

It is not yet known how these innovations will affect future tournaments and RMR qualifiers. However, it is already clear that Valve aims to reduce the influence of tournament operators on team selection and make the system as open as possible.