Valve Announces New Professional Tournament Requirements
Official: A Level Playing Field
This update focuses on professional tournament organizational rules and does not introduce changes to item supply or demand. It is a structural change for the esports ecosystem rather than the in-game economy.
Counter-Strike is at its best when teams compete on a level playing field and when ability is the only limit to their success.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen professional Counter-Strike drift away from that ideal. The ecosystem has become gradually less open, with access to the highest levels of competition increasingly gated by business relationships.
We think that Counter-Strike should be an open sport. So we’re going to add new requirements to running large-scale competitive events. The finer details are still in progress, but here are the broad strokes:
Over the past few years, we’ve seen professional Counter-Strike drift away from that ideal. The ecosystem has become gradually less open, with access to the highest levels of competition increasingly gated by business relationships.
We think that Counter-Strike should be an open sport. So we’re going to add new requirements to running large-scale competitive events. The finer details are still in progress, but here are the broad strokes:
- Tournament organizers will no longer have unique business relationships or other conflicts of interest with teams that participate in their events.
- Invitations to all tournaments will use our ranking system (detailed [url=https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike/tree/main/regional_standings]here[/url]), or otherwise be determined by open qualifiers.
- Any compensation for participating teams—prize pool or otherwise—will be made public and will be driven by objective criteria that can be inspected by the community.