Strike #5: The seven deadly sins of Valve TOR

Eight months into the new ecosystem, tournament organizers are still struggling to comply with Valve's Tournament Operation Requirements.

'Strike' is a (not so) regular column written by HLTV Editor-in-chief Milan "Striker" Švejda, which focuses on new realities of a Valve-regulated circuit.

It's September, we're eight months into the new ecosystem governed by Valve, and more than a year has passed since the now (in)famous Tournament Operation Requirements rulebook was first detailed.

Back when it all started in January, it was obvious there were going to be some mishaps as tournament organizers were taking their first steps under the newfound scrutiny. Understanding of what each of the rules meant was far from common, especially when Valve's communication was often patchy and their wording of some of the rules was ambiguous at best.

The same communication issues persist, but a lot of time has passed, many of the questionable rules have been clarified, and TOs have had the chance to learn from the rest of the circuit. And yet, mistakes that range from failures to follow basic checklists to egregious offenses that fly in the face of Valve's goal of creating a fair environment still happen.

This has led to Valve forcing some tournaments to go unranked and others to be adjusted in order to comply, often in ways that have made the circuit difficult to predict and frustrating for those who had their opportunities taken away.

So, in an attempt to help TOs learn from others' mistakes, I've put together a list of the biggest examples of lethal offences that have caused Valve to step in:

1. Favoritism

"Everyone who looks at a team with lustful intent has already committed favoritism with it in his heart."

If there's one key element of the new rules that stands above all else and one reason they had to come into effect in the first place, it is the fight against exclusivity.

After years of franchises and partnership structures, you're not allowed to invite teams at your leisure anymore, but that's, in essence, what happened just last month with MESA Nomadic Masters Fall.

In what they called "an oversight," the Mongolian tournament organizers were deemed to have given some teams "advance access to the sign-up process for a first-come-first-served open event," violating rule 3.5 of the Tournament Operation Requirement and paying the price for the mistake by way of being marked as unranked.

2. Opacity

"Whoever conceals his bans will not prosper, but he who confesses them will obtain mercy."

To ensure the rules are followed and that failures to comply can be easily identified, Valve enforced a level of transparency that makes it impossible to exclude teams from the invite process willy-nilly.

CCT learned that the hard way early on, when their first tournament of the year was forced to go unranked after they skipped various teams in the invite process over suspected shadow bans.

It is possible to ban teams from your tournaments, of course. You just need to be transparent about the rules for such action ahead of time and about the decision when it happens.

3. Tardiness

"How long will you lie there, O tournament organizer?
When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
and unrankedness will come upon you like a robber."

Valve requires tournament organizers to adhere to certain deadlines, which range from the basic first announcement of your event's dates to all the rest of the details about it.

If you're late about either, you may end up with an unranked tournament or one well below the prestige you first intended, as Perfect World found out this summer.

The Chinese TO first announced the CS Asia Championships 2025 in time, but then took too long to reveal additional details and ended up rescheduling the event in response to a clash with ESL Pro League, causing Valve to enforce CAC to go down to a Tier 2 event.

There are also alarm bells going on over at StarLadder, who are over a month late (and running) with their announcement of additional details for StarSeries May next year.

4. Negligence

"Whoever knows the right thing to announce and fails to do it, for him it is sin."

While we're on the subject of additional details, it's a checklist of things you have to announce by the deadline. Point by point, these could not be outlined more clearly, and yet it happens far too often that a tournament organizer fails to follow it to the letter.

A recent example would be the Dubai Police Esports Tournament, which failed to announce some of the details on a public platform, or the Legion Regular Cup, which invited an unranked team and did not announce any invite rules in the first place, or the RESF Russia Cup that did not announce the details in time and missed several points.

With newer TOs it is also often difficult to find the necessary information because the only place it exists is on obscure platforms and/or ones that lack a proper timestamp that would prove it was announced in time, which prompted Valve to introduce a new rule not long ago:

But seriously, what's wrong with using X? Everyone else is doing it.

5. Indecision

"How long will you go limping between opinions? The additional deadline is God, follow it."

In some cases, tournament organizers wanted to make changes to their events past the additional information announcement deadline, which is another big no-no.

Perfect World's aforementioned CS Asia Championships event was found in violation of this as well, changing their invite structure too late, only to be forced to revert (some of) the changes a week later.

Issues still remain with the TO getting away with other spot changes, which Valve says came down to a lack of clarity about what the original spots were supposed to be, but the point remains: Stay true to what you've announced, or else.

Another problem arises when you wait too long to decide all invites. That can lead to situations like PGL encountered in March, when it was waiting on answers for the main event while the closed qualifiers were starting, which ultimately led to the Romanian TO having to restart the whole process, snubbing four teams that had previously been guaranteed a spot in the qualifiers.

6. Confliction

"Remember rule 5.3 Potential Conflicts of Interest, to keep it holy."

If there's a single most crucial rule that governs a tournament's integrity, it is 5.3 Potential Conflicts of Interest.

It prevents tournament organizers from having ownership and management ties to teams that participate in their events, in an attempt to keep TOs from favoring their own teams and teams from hosting tournaments for themselves to get an edge on the Valve Regional Standings.

Enforcing this rule is another question, of course, because proving such ties can range from difficult to impossible. So far there has been no high-profile case outside of the rules, and I was told the only time an event was left out because of such a connection was LastOnline Summer Showdown, co-organized by ROUNDS and featuring a team of the same name.

It would, however, constitute a deadly sin, one that Valve would no doubt make an example of should it ever come to light after the fact.

7. Ordinarity

"For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself."

If you've gotten to this point and are thinking, 'But some tournaments have done the above and gone unpunished?', you're right.

In most cases, that's where exceptions come in. Valve reserve the right to give TOs leeway where they see fit, and have done so quite extensively, especially when it comes to the bigger organizers.

But not everyone can get a pass, and I've received several reports of cases where one TO got an exception and another was passed up on the same grounds.

One such case I can speak to was the shift of BLAST Open London's group stage online beyond the additional deadline. According to Valve, that was only approved after the fact, and penalties were considered, even though I'm not aware of any being handed out in the end.

Others tried to use it as precedent and got nowhere. That is apart from StarLadder, who also got exceptions well beyond the usual scope for its test run for the Budapest Major and its first event in years.

Read more

StarLadder StarSeries Budapest LAN group stage replaced with online qualifier

Ordinarity on its own is certainly no sin. But being exceptional can pull you out of the deep end when you do step out of line.