CS2's "Open Season" Announcement

Following up on the very brief "Levelling the playing field" announcement, Valve's new rulebook surrounding the rework around tournament ecosystems and their restructuring is now out and will take effect in 2025. Invitational restrictions have been imposed to counter the widespread franchising culture.

The first notable section in the rulebook classifies tournaments into ranked and unranked events with the latter not contributing towards the Valve Regional Standings (VRS). Strict rules have been imposed on what teams can be invited to ranked events and their qualifiers. While unranked events are not subject to these rules, the prize pool for the same cannot exceed $100,000 USD per event and $250,000 USD per year.

A distinction between tier 1 and tier 2 events states that the former is required to invite at least 16 teams throughout the closed qualifier and main event based on VRS out of which a minimum of 8 teams head to the main event. Tier 2 events are not bound to send out invites as per VRS but incase they do so, they can only invite teams placed ninth and below.

Ranked events are required to invite at least 1.5 times the number of teams who will compete at the main event. Half of the slots can be handed out through invites while the rest undergo a qualifier. Valve have made place for two Wildcard invites for every eight teams per event.

Valve permits one wildcard event per three completed tier 1 events and these events can feature an unlimited number of teams as long as the team composition meets the mentioned requirements.

A more detailed ruleset on tournament announcements and the time frame to announce their venue, format and other specifics have been mentioned towards the end of the new rulebook.

Click here to read the full rulebook