Valve resets the rules on pro CS:GO tournaments: 'we’ve seen professional Counter-Strike drift away' from its ideals
After years of taking a hands-off approach to the pro CS:GO scene, Valve has very suddenly announced major changes to the rules governing tournament organizers that it says will help ensure that ability, and not money, determine which teams rise to the top of competitive events.
«Counter-Strike is at its best when teams compete on a level playing field and when ability is the only limit to their success,» Valve wrote. «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.»
A good example of this is the ESL Pro League's "Louvre Agreement," which enables «a select group of elite teams to participate in the Pro League on an ongoing basis.» Those teams share in the revenues earned by ESL and are given permanent slots in the league every season, and the only way they can lose that slot is by finishing last in their group in three out of four seasons, at which point their place in the slot «shall be subject to review.» A form of relegation not unfamiliar with European football fans, in other words, but with financial entanglements.
An obvious spinoff effect of this deal is that it's much harder for up-and-coming teams to earn a place in top-tier tournaments, because only a small number of leftover slots are open to them. Valve's new rule changes are aimed directly at changing that situation by forbidding business partnerships between organizers and teams—details are still being finalized, but these are «the broad strokes»:
Essentially, arrangements like the Louvre Agreement will be outlawed: Instead, all tournament seeding will be determined solely by
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