HLTV Confirmed: Everything wrong with the VRS ft. Snappi, YaLLa, messioso

11-2-2025 16:25

Join the special multi-guest episode at 19:00 .

Snappi will share his thoughts on the competitive circuit

Join Chad "⁠SPUNJ⁠" Burchill, Milan "⁠Striker⁠" Švejda, and Zvonimir "⁠Professeur⁠" Burazin for another episode of HLTV Confirmed, this time focused on the all-important Valve Regional Standings and the impact Valve's rules are having on the Counter-Strike circuit.

To help us figure out the issues and potentially provide solutions, three guests will join the panelists. The first one is Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer, a figure known for publicly speaking against the partner-league system, who once again found himself on the outside while rebuilding Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Following will be Teemu Koski of YaLLa Esports, one of the tournament organizers who has run into issues while trying to host tournaments under the new Valve directives. And finally, returning guest Graham "messioso" Pitt who is the General Manager of Complexity and a well-informed figure on the topic of Valve's rules.

Finally, if time permits, we will touch on PGL Cluj-Napoca and the biggest storylines around the event.

Topic list:

IEM Katowice
- apEX gets his trophy
- WATO: ZywOo vs donk 2025
- ZywOo matches s1mple's record
- Skinionaire

VRS issues and fixes
- Snappi (NIP) and player perspective
- Teemu (YaLLa Esports) and TO perspective
- messioso (Complexity) and team perspective

PGL Cluj-Napoca
- Three storylines (if time allows)

Live broadcast on Twitch
Updates and clips on Twitter
Past HLTV Confirmed episodes
Audio versions of the show

Nice :D

2025-02-11 16:26

no hate but why is it mostly dookie teams complaining about vrs

10 replies

now they have to work if they want a salary.

2025-02-11 16:28

1 reply

no because to get up the valve ranking you need to be invited

2025-02-12 11:18

its kinda obvious

2025-02-11 16:29

2 replies

Then can you say it , it ' s not obvious for me . Regards

2025-02-11 16:35

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I understand this VRS system was created to counter the partner-leagues which were formed during the BLAST and ESL duopoly, as that system allowed "bad" teams (stale might be a better word) to continue participating in the tier 1 circuit. But as it currently stands the VRS system has been unable to create any significant impact as the top teams continue to get invites to tier 1 tournaments and new teams (or those with no VRS points) have a very difficult time getting any points (which they desperately need) due to a multitude of reasons highlighted in the article below. hltv.org/news/40964/teams-write-open-let.. @CodeStrife7 only "dookie" (I disagree with this adjective) teams are complaining about this as becuase they need VRS points to qualify for majors or the MRQs. asy_owo

2025-02-11 16:57

Players are upset because they actually have to grind through qualies in order to get their paycheck, instead of getting preferential treatment through their orgs and getting arbitrary invites to T1 events even though they suck at the game. Orgs are upset because they have become so bloated over the past 5 years with tournament partnerships, and they can no longer sustain their decadance with the new system. A lot of these orgs have no idea how to scout players or put togher a real roster and were just riding on free money from arbitrary invites instead of invited being based on rank. TO's are upset because Valve is actually putting in effort for once trying to make a more predictable scene and holding TOs to their word. Especially worse TOs like Yalla and Skyesports were so used to springing up events two months out and treating Orgs, players, and staff like shit that they cant fathom having to plan 6 months out for T2 events and 2 years out for T1 events. All of them will whine and complain but I dont think Valve should back down. These companies and people did this to themselves and they don't deserve to be in the scene if they can't hold their own weight, form heavy hitting rosters, or plan ahead.

2025-02-11 16:43

4 replies

Great analysis, Also, if orgs cant pay/get money, there shouldnt be anymore long contract jails, this should make rostermania more solid for t1/t2.

2025-02-11 18:29

How exactly does this system prevent any of that from happening? The only thing you do is continue to bloat the ones already at the top of the totem pole completely discouraging anyone new from entering the scene or actually trying to assemble a roster. There is no way in hell anyone is ever making a roster from ground up now, it'll just be a bunch of cores moving with gradual changes.

2025-02-12 00:59

People are so brain dead because they only care about Top 20 teams. They don't realize that the eSport dies off when you start killing off the smaller orgs growing new players trying to support the scene. If teams can't get invites because they have to play through qualifiers all the time (and half those qualifiers overlap and teams have to default) and don't earn any VRS points then the top gets bloated and the smaller orgs cease to exist because why run a team that has 0 chance to ever have success. The system was always going to be doomed from the start, that was a given when you make a huge shake up. It's more about how valve react and make an effort to correct and build a healthy system. Otherwise every event is the same teams and the eSport will die off when smaller orgs no longer have any interest in salarying teams

2025-02-12 07:27

Even if you make it thru an open qualifier you won’t get invited cus you need 10 ranked wins which only counts past closed qualifiers so you have to win more than 20 games in a row to get a rank from open qualifier

2025-02-12 09:09

Change ZywOo as "goat" in your research bar. Best wishes.

2025-02-11 16:27

You don't need discuss the fact

2025-02-11 16:58

lots of crying inc

It's hard to do those online qualifiers. We had to like 5 in a row. We won no one, but my point is imagine for a small org, like 3d max or EF.

2025-02-11 16:54

snappi talking about VRS while nip are ranked #54 on there and are top100 on HLTV rankings skill issue on his part xddd

His nip isnt ranked in vrs

2025-02-11 16:37

Hey my dearest hltv user. NIP is yet to be ranked, with their new lineup. Kind regards

2025-02-11 16:46

NiP isnt ranked right now. But we all know they are top #1 by 2025, they said it

2025-02-11 17:09

That's old roster lol. Not this one. This one won't make it to make unless valve brings back ooen qualifiers

2025-02-11 18:25

LET'S GOOOOOO

2025-02-11 16:48

I can already see Mesioso being angry about not getting the same amount of money as last year, although an obvious solution would be to take more out of the prize money for the org instead of the players. Also Snappi about not getting enough opportunities to get better ranking, but all the opportunities NIP got they squandered away with bad play. No more buying yourself a ticket to tournaments with partner leagues. People still crying about the merit based system Valve made... Hopefully they will talk about real issues like VRS cutoff in the middle of the tournament and so on...

2025-02-11 16:52

I like the idea, but there is also big flaws. The 3 man-core doesn't help the small org at all. Big org don't only steal one or two players, they now steal your core. Also, the fact VRS use hltv for their ranking is just stupid.

Sure, all those are a problem they should discuss. And VRS uses the HLTV because HLTV just has the data (a very big one) and Valve does not. I don't see a problem with this, if HLTV let's them. I don't know if Valve will implement some kind of tracking, perhaps by the TOs and also the orgs to register the event and the players with Valve somehow...

Snap can't stop crying about tournaments.

2025-02-11 16:55

Maybe snappi and his buddies should start consistently winning even tier3 opponents before crying about the rankings and invites. If you are a shit team and you don't get invites to top events, the system is at least on that part working as it should. Why would they get invited if they are incredibly bad? Does he need a senior citizen access to tournaments?

2025-02-11 17:34

Reposting my thoughts on this: What I think they should do is: - double the amount of teams for all the MRQs, or perhaps keep the size of the MRQ but have half of them come from a closed qual with double the amount of teams (Say 16 teams invited for MRQ EU means 32 for the closed qual) and this means if you dont have the rankings for an invite its cause you are dogshit, no need for opens quals and grifter orgs that dont stick around the ecosystem - Make T2 wildcard invites much easier to give out and in larger numbers. This way a notable team doesnt have to start from zero if they dont have a core - Hire someone to be fulltime esports consultant, explaining rules to TOs and Teams and helping sort out issues before they arise - Heavily incentivize TOs to run more qualifiers (even just closed) I feel this should make the system more open but while still incentivizing good play across a season instead of just lucking out in an open qualifier

2025-02-11 20:02