VRS model update adds "minimum participation requirement" for rosters, connects event stages

A player must now play five of the past ten matches to appear on an active roster for a team on the VRS.

Valve has shipped two crucial updates to its VRS model, addressing a key complaint around event weight for tournaments featuring multiple stages and adding a new "minimum participation requirement" for a player to appear on an active roster for a team on the VRS.

"Event stages that can be connected to later event stages (e.g., qualifiers or group stages) now add to their prize pool a portion of the final stage's prize pool," the first update reads.

The change addresses an issue with most multi-stage events, including IEM Cologne, IEM Katowice, and the Majors, where early tournament stages had significantly reduced weight towards Bounty Collected and Bounty Offered due to their prize pool being minimal or counted as offering spots in the following stage of the event.

The second update means a player must now play five of the past ten matches to appear on an active roster for a team on the VRS, preventing a player who only briefly stepped in for a team from replacing a member on the primary roster.

FaZe were a victim of that very situation when the June ranking update left them with a roster that featured both Felipe "⁠skullz⁠" Medeiros and Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev despite the former playing just three matches for the team at IEM Dallas.

The complete VRS ranking and model can be viewed here.