Valve updates Major rulebook, changes Qualification and Stages

Valve has released an overhauled Major Supplemental Rulebook in the lead up to PGL Major Copenhagen. The biggest changes come to Major seeding, a category where the game developer faced a lot of criticism in the previous majors. The Major seeding will no longer be based solely on the RMR performance.

Starting with Copenhagen, Major seeding will be based on Valve’s Regional Standings, the system that was first announced in December 2022. The ranking is already used to determine some invites to the RMRs, allowing some teams to skip through open qualifiers. The system will now also influence the Major seeding by taking over from RMR standings as the seed decider.

Previously, a team that was ranked very in the Regional Standings could be given a poor seed in the Major based on a bad run at the RMR. Famously, FaZe were assigned the #16 seed at the Paris Major despite being ranked #3 before the event.

According to a comment from the developer to HLTV.org, going forward the RMR will lead to ranking point updates to the Regional Standing and the updated standing will be used to decide the final seeding for the event.

Valve has also changed the opening round matchups for Majors. The top seeded team will now face off against the #9 seed instead of the #16 seed as was the case in previous majors. The updated matchups are as follows:

• 1 vs 9

• 2 vs 10

• 3 vs 11

• 4 vs 12

• 5 vs 13

• 6 vs 14

• 7 vs 15

• 8 vs 16

The final changes come to the names of the three stages of the major. The last change to the major stages came in 2018 when the Major Qualifier was included into the Major, increasing the total teams from 16 to 24 and introducing the New Challengers stage to ELEAGUE Major Boston 2018. Now, the three stages will be named 'Opening', 'Elimination' and 'Playoffs’, instead of the traditional 'Challengers', 'Legends' and 'Champions’ stages. This change greatly simplifies the naming, making the whole system easier to understand for casual fans of the game.

Alongside this, the 'Contenders', 'Challengers' and 'Legends’ tags for teams will also be removed going forward. All these changes will go into effect with PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen which is scheduled to run from March 17 to 31.