Valve has made important changes to the CS2 tournament rules, regarding the invitation, allocating capacity between areas and using Valve Regional Standings (VRS) ranking system. These innovations will affect the context of the tournament and the process of selecting the team to participate in big tournaments.

Limitations for Wildcard invitations

Now, only the teams with at least three players are in the top 8 of the Valve rankings or the runner -up of the tournaments of the same level in the past 6 months to be able to receive Wildcard invitations. This rule has affected Ninjas in Pyjamas - due to the presence of Jackz in the squad, they no longer meet the conditions of receiving Wildcard.

Transferred from Tier-2 to Tier-1 via wildcard

Valve has simplified a team from Tier-2 that can go to Tier-1: From now on, the team that won a Tier-2 tournament can accept an invitation to participate in a Tier-1 or Tier-2 tournament. Previously, this requires the championship of a Tier-1 tournament.

Divide the invitation by the region

The tournament organizers can now allocate not only in the main area but also according to the sub -region:

Two capacity of the Americas can be divided into North America and South America.

The capacity of Asia can be allocated between Oceania, West Asia and East Asia.

Use the current rankings

The tournament organizers must use the latest updated version of the Valve rankings to allocate the invitation. Previously, they could use the rankings of the previous month, which opened the opportunity to manipulate rankings.

Mandatory use of VRS to stool the seed

All tournaments must use Valve Regional Standings (VRS) to separate seeds for teams. However, ESL has been exempted for the EPL tournament, where they will use its own team allocation system.

The impact on the context of CS2

These changes aims to make the invitation process more transparent and eliminate the situation that the teams receive the attendance without significant achievements. On the other hand, teams playing at Tier-2 level will be easier to enter big tournaments.

It is still unclear how these innovations will affect the upcoming tournaments and RMR qualifiers. However, it can be seen that Valve is aiming to reduce the influence of the tournament organizers in selecting the participating team and making the system more fair and open.