Valve announces relaxation for certain events in 2025
Over the course of the last few months Valve announced that tier 1, 2 and 3 Counter-Strike events had to adhere to Valve's tournament guidelines which dictates how announcements related to the tournaments, invites and prize pools should be handled.
A few tournaments that were announced for 2025 had elements that would not sit with these tournament guidelines and in some cases, straight out contrast the guidelines. There was no reasoning for the same up until now. In their GitHub repository, Valve has added these tournament exceptions and explained why these events were allowed to operate outside the guidelines.
The list includes several ESL, PGl and BLAST event among others and here are the exceptions:
ESL Pro League Season 21
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May directly invite some teams based on their performance in previous Pro League Seasons
ESL Pro League Season 22
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The event may invite additional wildcard rosters to the closed qualifier
IEM Dallas
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NA and SA may be applied as VRS filters despite note being official regions
Esports World Cup 2025
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May invite the winner of Hero Esports ACL in lieu of one VRS invitation
BLAST Rivals
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May run one Wildcard event after two Tier 1 events instead of three
BLAST Open & PGL Bucharest/Astana/Belgrade
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May run regional VRS qualifiers to fill four positions in lieu of VRS invitations for position 13-16 in their event. The qualifiers cover Europe, Asia, NA and SA.
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Each Qualifier covers at least 16 VRS teams beyond those already invited to the event, in the respective region
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NA and SA are applied as VRS filters despite not being official regions, provided each receive an equal number of invitations to the main event and 16+ VRS invitations to the qualifier
Hero Esports ACL
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May run a Tier 1 Asia event announced after the deadline has passed
Launders LAN
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May announce/operate with shorter timeframe than required for Tier 2 events
BrisVegas LAN
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May announce/operate with shorter timeframe than required for Tier 2 events
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