Upcoming Changes to CSGO Majors Invites Taking Place For Fall Major

Counter-Strike
January 17, 2020
Mario Juric

You heard it right, Valve is making changes regarding CSGO Majors. After sending an email to the main tournament organizers, if tournament hosts can come to an agreement with Valve, we might see a similar scenario to Dota 2 TI placements.

upcoming changes to csgo majors

© ESL

How Does the Current CSGO Major System Looks Like?

As you know, there are three stages to CSGO Majors.

  • The New Challengers Stage
  • The New Legends Stage
  • The New Champions Stage

The first stage(The New Challengers Stage) consists out of 16 teams who qualified via the Minor system. Top 8 teams from this stage will advance through to The New Legends Stage while the bottom 8 teams are relegated.

The New Legends Stage seeding is a problem here. Top 8 teams on the Major are awarded a ticket for the next CSGO Major where they will automatically qualify for the second stage.

Teams that are placed from the 9th-14th spot will participate in The New Challengers Stage in the next Major.

Upcoming Changes

As mentioned above, Valve sent out emails to the most popular events out there. Alongside proposals for the two ranking esports tournaments, these are the requirements Valve put in place

  • The event will be between July and September
  • The event will result in a LAN portion with a minimum of 8 teams
  • Initial event preceding the LAN competition can be online or LAN
  • The event will include a minimum of 24 teams, of which 16 slots are available to teams by Major ranking, and 8 are selected by a process of the TO’s choosing
  • The event results will differentiate between the top 16 performing teams and the remaining teams.
  • Initial seeding for the event will be done by Major ranking.
  • Valve will match up to $250k in prize money.

At the moment, a total of three events will qualify for this. The first one being ESL One Rio while the other two are still being discussed.

These three events will determine a rating for the 8 teams that will be invited to The New Legends Stage. However, we will also see the next 8 teams invited in The New Challengers Stage.

Valve also stated that they do not want to add any restrictions to certain things such as format, size and location.

How Will This Affect CSGO Majors?

Since this is still a pilot project, I believe that it will be a great fit. I also believe that this method will change the seeding problem where certain teams would already have a Major spot for themselves.

There are countless examples out there where esports teams take advantage of this seeding. Even though this seems like a rushed decision right now, it will be interesting to see who will claim those top 8 spots.

What Are the Potential Tournaments That Meet the Requirements?

There are quite a few popular CSGO tournaments out there. However, ESL events are definitely the most popular (if we do not include Majors).

From my perspective, we will see new events formed mainly for this. On top of that, Valve also decided to match the prize pool money with up to $250,000. All in all, I believe that this is a great move by Valve which will force tournament organizers to work together.

Read also: DreamHack Open Leipzig is the First CS:GO Event in 2020
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