Strike #3: How a faulty VRS mechanic prevented Nexus from making a change for four months

Nexus have been stuck in limbo after a commonplace stand-in situation turned into the worst-case scenario.

'Strike' is a regular column written by HLTV Editor-in-chief Milan "Striker" Švejda, which focuses on the new realities of a Valve-regulated circuit.

Let me be the 'ackchyually' guy for a moment.

I often see generic statements like "fuck VRS" thrown around in comments in response to a lot of different things. People tend to use the acronym interchangeably for the ranking it derives from (Valve's Regional Standings) and the overarching rules for the ecosystem (Tournament Operating Requirements) when these are not the same thing.

The ranking is catching a lot of flak that has nothing to do with it because of that, and the reasons are often ridiculous regardless. The same teams compete in two tournaments in a row? Fuck VRS. Teams exercise their right to take some time off? Fuck VRS. No open qualifiers in tournaments that had none before 2025 anyway? Fuck VRS.

That's not very helpful. Instead, let's channel that energy better and look at one issue with a specific mechanic of the ranking, which sent a team in limbo for months after an everyday situation turned into the worst-case scenario.

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At the end of 2024, Nexus competed in the Skin.Club Christmas Cup. After making it to the playoffs with the full lineup, the team was forced to play the semi-final match with a stand-in, Gabriel-Cosmin "⁠zewts⁠" Letcanu, while one of the team's core players, Cosmin "⁠ragga⁠" Teodorescu, was dealing with a problem with his ear. Nexus were subsequently eliminated from the tournament after a single match with zewts.

Because that was their last match of the year, the next invitation ranking in January listed the stand-in, zewts, in Nexus' roster instead of their player of four years, ragga.

During that winter break, Nexus considered multiple roster changes. However, because the ranking listed the lineup with a stand-in, they were limited to one change in a situation where they should have been allowed two.

This is because a team is required to play the whole tournament with at least three players who appeared on the ranking used for invites to that tournament. As ragga wasn't listed because of sitting out the last match of 2024 — and Nexus wanted to keep him — the team could only change one more player unless one of the new additions would be the stand-in.

To make matters even worse, Nexus had no way of correcting the lineup until two months after they made the first change with Alexandru "⁠s0und⁠" Ștefan replacing Daniel-Cătălin "⁠Ciocardau⁠" Purice at the beginning of the year.

The only ranked tournament they were invited to in January, YaLLa Compass Winter Contenders, had its ranked status removed because it didn't comply with the new rules. The first ranked match the Romanians ended up playing in 2025 was in the RES Showdown closed qualifier, which took place the day after the February invitation ranking was released.

As a result, the first time ragga reappeared on Nexus' lineup on the invitation VRS was at the beginning of March. That allowed the team to make the second change with the addition of Laurențiu "⁠lauNX⁠" Țârlea instead of Roberto "⁠ADRON⁠" Paun, but the nightmare doesn't end here.

Even as of March 26, Nexus are still competing or are about to compete at tournaments to which invites were handed out in February, which means they cannot use one of the new additions there.

Some of these tournaments run well into April, forcing Nexus to play with an outdated lineup almost four months after they made the 'mistake' of playing a single match with a stand-in. Had they qualified for IEM Dallas, the limbo period would have extended well into May because invites to the closed qualifier went out to the lineup featuring zewts.

The odds of this are innumerable. It is unlikely enough for you to play a match with a stand-in just before an invitation ranking goes out. It is even more so that you'd want to make two changes immediately after that, let alone ones that don't include the player you had previously subbed out. The chances reach astronomical proportions when you consider that Nexus had their opportunity to update the lineup in January, which would have substantially limited the damage, taken away on top of that.

However, it's not just this freak accident that needs to be fixed. The same exact mechanic that allows you to change the lineup after a single match can be — and has been — abused in the opposite direction, where you can change three or four players without the short-term punishment of losing all your points.

Let's consider that there's a crucial invitation ranking update coming up that has a lot of tournament invites on the line. A team could make two player changes just before that cut-off so that their VRS lineup on that invitation ranking features the two new additions. Then, in the tournaments they get invited to on that date, they can change two more players, leaving just one member from the team that had earned the right to that invite.

In the end, this workaround will cause that team to lose the points they had earned with the old core. But if you do it at an opportune enough time, when a lot of invites are coming up, and are successful enough with the new core, you can circumvent the system and get away with it. PARIVISION did just that, briefly using Daniil "⁠alpha⁠" Demin from the old core to earn the invites, and they're now sitting in 23rd place in Europe despite changing three players at the beginning of the year.

Needless to say, this has to change sooner rather than later. I notified Valve of the first issue in January, and then the second in February, but it has gone unresolved.

Back then I wasn't sure how to solve both at the same time without creating more issues, but a way to go about it would be for the VRS to consider which members earned the majority of a team's points. A team would then be required to field at least three of those players instead of any three in a lineup. That way, you will always field a team majority that earned the right to be at the tournament.

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Strike #2: The big orgs won the battle of attrition, but the war is far from over