Valve obliges licensed TO to explain disqualification rules and decisions in CS2
2024-08-06 12:15:00Valve added new subsection to their CS2 tournament rules, which will come to life with the new open circuit in 2025. They allowed licensed organizers to decline Invites of participants based on previous integrity violations. However, a TO must publish disqualification rules and explain a decision to block a team or a player whenever that happens. The new rules appeared on the official rulebook page on GitHub.
Valve's CS2 tournament rule changes, August 5
- 5.4 Invite Exceptions.
- The Licensee [TO] may have rules that disqualify certain individuals from participating in their events due to misconduct, cheating infractions, being flagged by esports bodies as a matchmaking fix risk, or other integrity or compliance issues. If the Licensee wishes to disqualify any Rosters, they must:
- Publish the disqualification rules as part of Additional Information. (see 4.3)
- Publish the details of any disqualification decision at the time it occurs.
The new addition came out a day after BC.Game player Joel "joel" Holmlund was banned by GRID, the organizer of CCT S2 EU #7. Their anti-cheat Akros detected cheats used by the Swede at their event. The team was issued a default loss and disqualified from the event. Valve didn't comment on the matter.
The open circuit rules were revealed in mid-July. Valve split all the CS2 events into ranked and unranked, and explained how the invites would work starting from 2025. As promised, the publisher removed franchised formats, although allowed TOs to share revenue on a "non-discriminatory basis." Read our summary below for more details.
