Valve overhauls Major seeding process, changes stage names

The developers have altered the way seeding is done for the Majors and scrapped the traditional names of the tournament stages.

Valve has made a host of changes to its Major Supplemental Rulebook ahead of PGL Major Copenhagen. One of the biggest changes is the way pre-event seeding is done and how it is determined who gets to skip the first stage, as it will no longer be based on the results of the RMRs.

Moving forward, the 24 teams who qualify for the Major through the RMRs will be seeded according to Valve's Regional Standings, a ranking introduced in December 2022. Initially, it was used to determine a portion of the invites to the closed qualifiers for the RMRs leading to the BLAST Paris Major.

The new method will prevent situations where a team that is high in Valve's rankings gets a low seed at the Major only because of a disappointing run at the RMRs. For example, FaZe had the 16th seed of the Paris Major's Challengers Stage despite being ranked third in the world at the time after scraping through the European RMR.

Contacted by HLTV.org, Valve said that the Regional Standings will be updated after the RMRs to reflect their results, determining which teams will go straight to the last-16 stage.

Valve has also introduced a new pre-determined pairing for the first Swiss round of the Major, which will feature the following matchups:

1 vs 9
2 vs 10
3 vs 11
4 vs 12
5 vs 13
6 vs 14
7 vs 15
8 vs 16

In previous Majors, the first seed faced the 16th, the second faced the 15th, etc, in the first round. From the second round onwards the system will remain the same: The highest-seeded team will face the lowest-seeded team within the same pool, as long as it doesn't lead to rematches.

Another important change announced by Valve is the renaming of the three tournament stages from 'Challengers', 'Legends' and 'Champions' to 'Opening', 'Elimination' and 'Playoffs'.

This marks the first change to the names of the tournament stages since ELEAGUE Major Boston 2018, when the offline qualifier became part of the Major and the number of teams increased from 16 to 24.

Along with this change, Valve will also remove the names 'Contenders', 'Challengers' and 'Legends' to designate the teams participating at the Major.

The first Major of the Counter-Strike 2 era will take place between March 17-31 in Copenhagen and will be run by PGL. The qualifying process will begin on January 8 and run until the end of the month, while the RMRs will be held between February 14 and March 4.