Valve releases invite-deciding March VRS update

3-3-2025 22:51

The invites for BLAST Rivals Season 1 and PGL Astana are set to be decided by this update.

BLAST Rival Season 1 is among the tournaments set to use this update to decide invites

Valve has released the March update to the VRS, upon which several significant tournaments are set to base their invites.

BLAST Rivals, PGL Astana, CCT Global Finals and MESA Nomadic Masters are all due to utilize this update to decide their invites, and several teams have seen their chances of earning invites boosted or harmed by said update.

It's worth noting that PGL Astana finishes one day before IEM Dallas begins, so teams attending IEM Dallas are likely to decline invites for PGL Astana.

Liquid slid five places globally compared to the crucial February update amidst a slow start to the season, whilst Astralis climbed into the top 10 after their PGL Cluj-Napoca run, and have opened up a gap ahead of paiN in 11th.

BLUEJAYS were perhaps the biggest winners in this update, rocketing into the top 30 globally and top eight regionally with their LAN win at Fragadelphia Block.

BLUEJAYS sign BOSS

Here's a rundown of the aforementioned tournaments and their invite distributions:

BLAST Rivals Season 1
- Four spots by Global VRS
- One wildcard invite each for NA, EU, SA and Asia

PGL Astana
- 12 spots by Global VRS
- One qualifier each from NA, EU, SA and Asia

CCT Global Finals
- Six spots by Europe VRS
- One spot by NA VRS
- One spot by SA VRS

MESA Nomadic Masters

- Two spots by Europe VRS
- Two spots by Asia VRS
- Two from Europe qualifier
- One from Asian qualifier
- One from MESA League Season 4

The VRS standings for the top 30 globally are as follows:

Team
1.

Spirit (EU)
2.

Vitality (EU)
3.

The MongolZ (AS)
4.

MOUZ (EU)
5.

FaZe (EU)
6.

Falcons (EU)
7.

Eternal Fire (EU)
8.

G2 (EU)
9.

Natus Vincere (EU)
10.

Astralis (EU)
11.

paiN (AM)
12.

Virtus.pro (EU)
13.

GamerLegion (EU)
14.

3DMAX (EU)
15.

Liquid (AM/AS)
16.

FURIA (AM)
17.

BIG (EU)
18.

MIBR (AM)
19.

SAW (EU)
20.

Wildcard (AM/EU)
21.

B8 (EU)
22.

HEROIC (EU)
23.

Complexity (AM)
24.

500 (EU)
25.

Imperial (AM)
26.

BC.Game (EU)
27.

Partizan (EU)
28.

FlyQuest (AS)
29.

BLUEJAYS (AM)
30.

BetBoom (EU)

Points
1963
1939
1885
1874
1839
1830
1809
1781
1751
1665
1539
1531
1497
1494
1451
1352
1274
1264
1250
1238
1144
1140
1092
1068
1066
1057
1052
1047
1041
1041

You can find all the standings, globally and regionally, on Valve's GitHub page.

If a team falls below the theoretical cut-off for an invite, it doesn't necessarily mean they will not get to participate. We have seen several teams skip tournaments already, especially PGL Cluj-Napoca, to which only half of the top 10 teams accepted an invitation.

In the case where a team decides to decline an invitation, it goes to the next eligible team on the corresponding VRS used.

???WT

2025-03-03 22:52

EF are from china apparently

6 replies

Chinese spies

2025-03-03 22:53

Tyloo adopted them

2025-03-03 22:55

xan thai res best chinese rifler

2025-03-03 23:02

2 replies

Oh hell no… HAHAHA

2025-03-04 10:02

haha

2025-03-04 13:07

Eternal Fire has a Turkish flag next to them what am I missing?

2025-03-04 15:38

Wrong EF

Ef?

EF chinese flag wtf?

3 replies

its EF not eternal fire wrong team apparently theres a chinese team called EF haha

2025-03-03 22:54

EF IS CHINESE SINCE THEY GOT OWNED BY TYLOO

2025-03-03 23:00

1 reply

LOL

2025-03-04 01:40

Etelnal File

x) this funnier than it should be

2025-03-04 12:54

500 most likely going to Astana Absolute Cinema

Astana teams based on dallas invites: Spirit Natus Vincere Astralis paiN Virtus.pro BIG MIBR SAW Wildcard B8 Complexity 500

2025-03-04 14:09

I'm excited to see the "underdog" LAN.

2025-03-04 14:56

Huge joke that Bluejays of all teams just casually slides into top 30 from winning a fucking 10k prize pool NA tier 4 lan event. VRS is a piece of shit system in its current implementation

2025-03-03 22:56

9 replies

LAN matches vs top 200 teams >>>>>>> trash online matches filled with top 50+ teams. Bluejays goated beating up American electricians and plumbers who play cs part time.

2025-03-03 23:01

so true

2025-03-04 00:56

Make a LAN then

2025-03-03 23:07

true teams shouldn't be allowed to play in tournies in their region only in eu, moron

2025-03-04 00:57

Sure they should. It's just that turnies that lacks good teams shouldn't give any decent amount of points.

2025-03-04 12:09

Thank valve for making $$$ the most important factor for VRS.

2025-03-04 15:33

But that’s not what he said, was it? The other 2 that upvoted you are just as braindead who can’t comprehend a simple post. Comical how you ended your post with “moron”. Very ironic. 😂

2025-03-04 15:21

ur scene is irrelevant stop crying jerman

2025-03-04 05:32

Bigger joke is an org signing known racists.

2025-03-04 09:32

Because of the recent rule more than few hundreds matches now don't count towards vrs, while event is not finished, 3 EPL day where tyloo beat two high team don't count, anything don't count for another month, ecl in asia which contribute more than 70% of matches don't count, ranking remain the same, ITS FUCKING GG. Matches HAS TO COUNT even if the tournament is not over, and we need to release ranking at least twice a month, it's just a shame

Classic Valve fucking over everyone through an update to fix an edge case issue, so stupid

2025-03-03 22:59

Tyloo haven't earned a cent from EPL yet since they haven't been eliminated. So no, even without that change it wouldn't have affected their ranking. But yeah, it's fucked that price money is the only relevant factor.

2025-03-04 00:40

4 replies

Prize money won is one of four factors (prize money won, prize money won by opponents, LAN wins, how many teams have been beaten by teams you beat), plus head to head elo adjustments. Tyloo would have benefited from the other three and two large elo adjustments from the wins.

2025-03-04 00:49

Check. Still, they would've needed to be eliminated to earn their points even before the rule change, right?

2025-03-04 08:26

The points for prize money earned yes, the other factors would have updated sooner (at least on HLTV's live version of the ranking). Now nothing counts until an event officially concludes. Valve only updates their ranking weekly, and the official invite ranking is only updated monthly. So the impact is less noticeable, but it's still a bigger problem for longer events like ECL.

2025-03-04 15:13

Not just prizemoney don't count from the tournament until it finishes. The matches themselves also don't count, which makes ECL probably the worst tournament imaginable because it lasts like 3 months and contributes nothing, the points from it come only after major invites will be sent.

2025-03-04 07:54

XANTARES best Chinese Player

2025-03-03 22:58

wtf is BLUEJAYS??

Macedonian powerhouse 4 years ago

2025-03-03 23:50

Canadian baseball team, they play cs as hobby

2025-03-04 04:52

They are a German org notable for their North Macedonian team, and now with an NA squad.

2025-03-04 15:16

Ni hao ma wo jiao Xantares

how are Mongolz still top 3 lol

hltv loves talentless underdogs from unknown regions

2025-03-04 00:14

This ranking is not hltv's lol

2025-03-04 01:07

Wow Na'Vi have only 3 events left without major and EPL. Maybe will they trickle wildcard with blast. And that shows that those wildcards are dogshit. Edit: 2 events not 3. Or maybe they will pick Astana because noone will showup in it.

2025-03-03 23:04

nah they want the Intel Grand Slam, they're going to ESL

2025-03-03 23:32

invites to ESL events are already out, Navi is going to Melbourne but not Dallas

2025-03-04 01:33

#86

2025-03-04 15:19

It looks like the best "local" teams (Spirit, Navi, Virtus.pro) all skipped Dallas to attend Astana instead. Which makes sense as they will almost certainly be the crowd favorites.

2025-03-04 15:18

So Bluejays beat some nobodies in NA for $5500, M80 beat Pain and Flyquest and guaranteed $6500 but they won't get any points for it for 2 weeks so they're behind COOL, at least it doesn't matter yet since liquid has the top NA spot now

2025-03-03 23:03

Lets go Navi

What an absolute garbage of a ranking, 500 and BLUEJAYS?¿?

2025-03-03 23:12

They both have won ranked events.

2025-03-04 15:20

How is bluejay 29?

2025-03-03 23:15

How is valve so stupid??? how are they struggling to make this vrs shit work like it should????

2025-03-03 23:16

M80 and Bluejays to PGL Astana confirmed

2025-03-03 23:18

No, assuming everyone in line accepts, the invite cutoff will be right after 500.

2025-03-04 15:22

worst fucking system ever hahaahahahahaha

2025-03-03 23:21

Mongolz still third just makes this ranking so fraudulent. They got insane amounts of VRS by winning an online bookie cup with like 4 teams attending. Regards

2025-03-03 23:27

I still remember the times when everybody was craving the end of the partner system. I wonder, if people knew how much of a shitshow this will be, if we truly understood what we are getting into.

2025-03-03 23:34

10 replies

people that follow a little bit of dota tried to warn, but folks were high on hopium

2025-03-04 01:36

Valve took upon themselves to make a shit ranking, it used to work fine when they followed HLTV ranking.

2025-03-04 03:43

still better than partner teams

2025-03-04 07:53

5 replies

That’s questionable at best, so far this is utter chaos, even embarrassing given its millions of dollars circulating around

2025-03-04 08:30

How? Because people think 500 are cheaters? Because bluejays are 29th? Nobody cared who was 29th before the VRS because we got shit EG and the same teams in every tournament. There is a lot more vairety now and the best teams are still in the most important tournaments. And if bluejays are not good enough they will fall down the rankings quickly. The LAN counts more, which it should, so small LAN tournaments will start popping up (which is super good) and even out the rankings. Not that much of a problem in that sense. What I see as a possible problem is the cutoff and live rankings and so on.

2025-03-04 09:26

I think you dont see how unsustainable the system is, but we will see, maybe it will figure itself out. But so far the amount of opportunities for smaller orgs to rise up the rankings is even smaller than before, because almost no smaller tournaments are considered "ranked", so the only way to gain points is to attend small LANs or win some qualifier games. The tier 2-3 circuit lost all of its value as a natural path to the bigger tournies. There are loopholes everywhere, the whole ecosystem wasnt ready for this at all and Valve did little to help in this regard. The only reason why we get "variety" of teams is because the big orgs boycotted PGL, otherwise it would be the same shit as before, just without EG

2025-03-04 09:31

Striker said there are more or less the same number of open qualifiers as before (except for the major), so plenty of oportunities for teams to get into tier 2 tournament where they can farm VRS points. And of course we want to see the best teams in tournaments not flukes. I don't want to see NIP if they are not good, before they were there every single tournament. The interest also has risen (at least for me) in watching tier 2 tournaments to see which team will get up in the rankings. I really don't care for housebets or mindfreaks to keep better teams from EPL (fortunately just the current exception). But that's me...

2025-03-04 09:58

The smaller events that you speak of just need to figure out how to run ranked events. If PLAYzone can plan to hold 3 ranked events in the Czech Republic this year I think other TOs can as well. MESA are doing it in Mongolia and bring in European teams as well, Fragadelphia are doing it in NA, and etc. That's how the VRS is intended to work.

2025-03-04 15:27

it would have been fine if valve just used hltv ranking for invites

2025-03-04 12:44

HLTV has a very good ranking system, but it was hampered a bit by gatekeeping smaller events and events in the Asia region.

2025-03-04 15:28

Mongolz 3rd while Navi 9th 😂

2025-03-03 23:46

>Doesn't attend tournaments >Falls in ranking *surprised pikachu face*

2025-03-04 01:59

hi, im navis management, we have to skip pgl events and only attend blast/ esl events, sowwy.

2025-03-04 06:06

rword

2025-03-04 00:43

Gods Reign gaining 200 points by winning a local tournament. Meanwhile Atox RA LVG and Tyloo are sweating to get some points. VRS is a joke.

2025-03-04 01:22

GabeN says you win money, show receipt & I give points xd

2025-03-04 02:48

BLUEJAYS???? OVER NRG???????????

they're much better than nrglul so it makes perfect sense

2025-03-04 05:31

-8/8

2025-03-04 07:21

Can't wait for the VRS to be an accurate reflection of the scene in 2037 🙂🙂

2025-03-04 02:17

Worst system ever LMAO

2025-03-04 02:29

We need a tennis version of points based on tournaments quality (no matter who turns out... someone has to determine what events gain what points). Blue Jays and Gods Reign's winning should count but should be considered tier 2 events or tier 3 for Gods Reign since not a lot of teams showed up. Each team gets some part of the total point pot but obviously winners get the most. However winning a t1 event should count a lot more than a tier 2 event.. no matter what the money is.

2025-03-04 02:53

Where’s Parivision

2025-03-04 03:08

getting cheated by valve, they dogged on bc game and other t2 teams twice and they're not even top 30 lul

How is FURIA and MIBR still ranked way too high...

2025-03-04 11:33

BLAST Rivals Season 1 - Four spots by Global VRS - One wildcard invite each for NA, EU, SA and Asia and I thought blast had fixed their circuit.. "wildcards" will probably be whoever pays them the most: falcons, liquid, furia

2025-03-04 12:39