Valve add new exceptions to eight tournaments*

9-7-2025 12:46

BLAST, ESL and Perfect World were handed special allowances for their tournaments.

BLAST Open groups' move to online were deemed an exception

Update 16:15 : CAC now a Tier 2 event

Upon inquiry, a Perfect World representative has revealed that CS Asia Championship is now a Tier 2 event following the change of dates.

Tier 2 event rules that are in force for the tournament specify that invites must start from below the top-12 teams, but CAC has seemingly got the exception to invite past event winners regardless of that requirement, which suggests FaZe, MOUZ or Natus Vincere, who won the 2023, 2019 and 2018 editions, could be in line for an invite for the Shanghai tournament.

Valve has updated the list of exceptions to their Tournament Operation Requirements, adding a raft of new special allowances for eight tournaments, organized by BLAST, Perfect World and ESL over the next year.

BLAST's allowances are three-fold, recognizing the TO's decision to move the upcoming BLAST Open S2 groups online, allowing a wildcard invitation to Season 2 of Bounty, and extending the status of the BLAST Rivals as a wildcard event despite the TO not hosting enough tournaments for it to qualify.

BLAST Open 2025: May change Season 2 group stage matches online status after the additional information deadline
BLAST Bounty 2025: May consider MRQs as a Tier 2 event for the purpose of wildcard invitations
BLAST Rivals 2026: May run one Wildcard event after two Tier 1 events instead of three

When it comes to the Bounty exception, it is clear BLAST is looking to invite one or more of the winners of the Major regional qualifiers who did not make it to the top 28 of the Global VRS as of July 7 to make it in by ranking. They are: OG, Fluxo, Imperial, Chinggis Warriors, Wildcard and FlyQuest.

BLAST Open London to begin online

In ESL's case, Valve reflected the addition of third-place deciders to the tournaments whose additional information deadline has already passed: Esports World Cup, ESL Pro League S22, IEM Chengdu and IEM Krakow.

EWC, EPL S22, IEM Chengdu, IEM Krakow: May run a third/fourth place match and divide the fourth place prize pool accordingly

ESL add third-place deciders from EPL S22 onward

Perfect World were handed an exception to their only international tournament on the 2025 calendar, the CS Asia Championships, taking place in October.

The TO previously announced that it would invite 10 teams by the Global VRS and six from closed qualifiers, but has now received an exception to include "two past CAC winners" as Wildcard invitations.

CAC 2025: May invite two past winners of prior CAC events as Wildcard invitations

However, the only recent previous CS Asia Championships winner is FaZe from 2023 with a core of Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard, Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants.

okay

2025-07-09 12:50

2 replies

bori ng

2025-07-09 12:55

1 reply

Aah!!

2025-07-09 14:16

tldr valve

2025-07-09 12:52

3 replies

the biggest change is that valve is allowing 3rd place deciders

2025-07-09 12:56

tanks

2025-07-09 13:47

Valve has always allowed them, they just don't allow TOs to make changes to their events after the additional information date has passed.

2025-07-09 14:56

When 128 tick and Anti-cheat updates ?

2025-07-09 12:53

29 replies

Why would they, that would just cost money, not net them money

2025-07-09 12:54

27 replies

If they want to show that they care about the game, they should do it. Otherwise all the hate they get is justified. They are completely destroying this legendary game, how am I going to show my kids what I've played when the game is dying and soon gonna be dead.

2025-07-09 13:01

25 replies

Reached record number of players earlier in March but yeah game will soon be dead lol

2025-07-09 13:09

a friendly reminder that the majority of team fortress 2's player base wasn't even real and the same applies for cs

2025-07-09 14:37

Friendly reminder to take your medicine

2025-07-09 14:42

Yeah, bots and re-created skin trading accounts who don't even play the game. Austin major lower viewership than CS:GO majors since 2021. Talk to me about records boi.

2025-07-10 16:03

After all this time, did you really think they care ? lol I've got a theory, Valve probably get money from faceit and other vendors like faceit to not make a better anticheat so that people who are frustrated with cheaters go to faceit and may be eventually buy a subscription too. Where casual gamers still continue on MM. So it's a win-win for them. Who cares about hate, as long as money is coming in. xD

2025-07-09 13:12

4 replies

faceit has cheaters too

2025-07-09 13:18

Don't disagree but it's not as common as MM.

2025-07-09 20:59

You're an idiot as people played Face-it in CSGO due to 128 tick servers. Also, CS2 is not breaking any records as no one comes across the farming bots who are on 24/7 in DM's? Valve is scum POS Company and they are only losing the player base w/ every dumb/useless update that never addresses the performance of the game... Actually I take that back since after any update, there is a performance change and it is to my FPS averaging lower w/ every trash update.

2025-07-11 09:31

what's your point ? i don't have any fps issue, get a better pc and you will get fps. pretty simple. sure performance isn't as smooth as go but it's what it is. don't cry about fps if your pc sucks. no one is talking about face it in go for 128tick. we have cs2 now so forget about go. people are still playing cs2 in faceit and paying for subscription. lol

2025-07-11 23:17

but they don't care about the game.

2025-07-09 13:21

"the game is dying pls fix volvo" I've been seeing people saying this shit for almost a decade now even though the statistics say otherwise

2025-07-09 13:39

14 replies

the bot base increases way faster than the player base

13 replies

Why are my cases getting more expensive then?

2025-07-09 14:51

12 replies

i don't know? but i do know that sometimes there is market manipulation and this could just be a result of people not selling or people buying low

11 replies

Let me ask you this, what makes you think that the bot base increases faster than the player base?

2025-07-09 15:00

10 replies

1) there's an ever increasing supply of games with more active development cycles than counter-strike. 2) we have seen the cheaters and how powerless valve is against them 3 ) we have seen the bots and how powerless valve is against them ^ i have never ever seen in my life an advert for counter-strike.

2025-07-09 15:03

6 replies

So it's just guesswork, got it

2025-07-09 15:09

should've just said "source: my ass" much less typing 👍

2025-07-09 15:12

its common sense which is a most human thing. if its profitable to run bots shooting at each other most of the player base will end up being bots which is exactly what happened to team fortress 2.

2025-07-09 15:45

I'm not denying the existence of bots but you have no statistical proof to back up anything regarding their number so what's even the point

2025-07-09 16:19

no statistical proof? steam charts have been a thing for a long time. reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/1dqudtd/explai.. this one is an infinitely better one at explaining it than i am.

2025-07-10 13:55

tf2 = CS

2025-07-12 01:54

It is the year 2025..... Have you heard of something called "AI" as it is ridiculous how AI bots farming on DM doesn't trigger any bans because Valve needs their numbers to look better....

2025-07-11 09:33

AI exists therefore botting increases faster than player numbers?

2025-07-11 16:53

as long as its profitable

2025-07-12 07:57

Mothertrucker valve is earning 1billion+ a year just from cs, yes fuck off they should spend some on better quality for the fucking people who plays the game that is givong them everything

you should watch youtube on how cheats and anti-cheats work. its actually pretty difficult to tackle this

2025-07-09 13:06

bad move, valve need to move away from giving exception like they did to BLAST and CAC.

2025-07-09 12:57

Usual L for Valve

2025-07-09 12:58

I wonder if these exceptions will keep piling on each year with the new esports tournament eco-system

Last 3 CAC winners are 2018 - NaVi - (Edward, s1mple, flamie, Zeus, electronic) 2019 - mousesports (chrisj, ropz, karrigan, woxic, frozen) 2023 - FaZe (rain, broky, ropz, karrigan, twistzz) so do the orgs get the invites the teams or the cores? and if it was the orgs, all of them would already be invited by VRS (i expect them to be top15 minimum). This is why i hate Valve giving exceptions like this.

2025-07-09 13:02

Can only be cores

IIRC Edward and flamie are playing together in a mix team with seized and GuardiaN right now, if they added Zeus they technically would be eligible which is hilarious to think about.

When they give exceptions this frequently, why are there rules in place at all?

Monopoly, or Duopoly

Because we are in a transitional period where tournament organizers are still adapting to the new regulations and cutting off all flexibility would be nonsense. Also half of them are just adding a third place match

2025-07-09 13:07

So amend the rules instead of giving out exceptions to them.

2025-07-09 13:23

Why would they? The rules are fine, TOs just didn't have enough time to restructure their event circuits.

2025-07-09 13:31

They've had a year since VRS was annouced, they knew what changes Valve were making, this is just some form of mitigating the damage of their incompetence.

2025-07-10 10:48

That's simply not true. The tournament regulations document was first uploaded to github in July 2024, so that is half a year until VRS was set to take over. And the rules and regulations have been adapted several times since then. The rules are new, in some ways unclear and subject to change, so the tournament operators should also be given some flexibility and leeway. And some of these contracts and plans are years in advance, you don't just book a venue the same year you're gonna use it, you book the venue a year in advance. You offer a set timeline to sponsors and give them a rundown on which tournaments you'll run and negotiate the sponsoring based on that. Blast for example has already shifted their schedule for 2027 to be in accordance with the rules, it likely just wasn't possible or at least would have come at a cost to shift their tournaments in 2026, so Valve gave them an exception in order to not disrupt the circuit too much.

2025-07-10 11:47

The rule in the 3rd place decider case is that the format of the event has to be announced 6 months in advance. It makes sense for Valve to allow ESL to make that change, because it is mostly positive for the teams, and going forward ESL will surely be announcing that in a more timely manner.

I am of the same opinion that a transition period needed to happen, but this period imo shouldve been 2025. Like i understand in 2025 valve gave exceptions as the TOs needed to change their format, keep viewership etc, but why are we doing that for 2026 events? They had plenty of time imo to accomodate, adding a 3rd place decider is fine it doesnt really clash with anything cuz no team is impacted, but moving parts of the tournament from offline to online, asking for wildcard invites etc impacts team and the meaning of vrs imo

2025-07-09 13:30

I don't think it's necessary to give a 100% cut for 2026 to not give out any exceptions anymore. They will be more strict with the rules and hand out less exceptions for 2026 because TOs had more time to adapt, but on a case-by-case basis it makes sense to still give out exceptions. Valve's end goal is that TOs advance events 2 full years in advance, we are only half a year into the new system, a lot of the deals/contracts/preparations from previous years are still in place and they want to disrupt the scene as little as possible while TOs transition

I mean, i guess u are right and didnt really take the timeframe into account like that, however i still dont understand why would they give exceptions for wildcard invites unless its esl model of having lower tier leagues qualfying u to the main event. The blast wildcards seem unecessary to me

2025-07-09 14:30

Blast got the same exception in 2025 already, I think it's just the way they set up and booked their tournament circuit for 2025 and 2026 so Valve allows them to host the wildcard event one event earlier because else they would have to cancel these events altogether or they'd need another exception to change the format For 2027 Blast follows the necessary criteria as far as I can see, so I assume this is just another transitional measure to keep the tournament flow running

2025-07-09 14:44

Correct and for the MRQ exception, those events no longer exist so this is definitely a one-time thing.

2025-07-09 15:10

Going from unstructured to structured is always not very seemless, allowing exemptions for a short period of time is normal

2025-07-09 13:14

please explain for mentally handicapped people (me)

blast doing funky stuff lots of tournaments adding 3rd place playoff match CS Asia Championships can invite old winners, but all old winners should have high enough VRS for invites anyway, so its a bit confusing

2025-07-09 13:19

2025-07-09 13:42

2025-07-09 13:26

why though. I get the ESL one for adding 3rd place deciders but why do blast get so many exceptions for seemingly no reason.

Now make a valve academy leagues where the winner can get vrs

2025-07-09 14:19

blast ruining scene...

2025-07-09 14:31

When BO5 major finals? It's ridiculous

Not sure why Blast get this many exceptions. The other exceptions are perfectly reasonable and can contribute to a better scene. Blast needs to be held accountable or Valve needs to loosen their deadlines.

2025-07-09 16:40