New clause added to Valve's VRS Model

In a recent update to the Valve Regional Standings model, a new clause has been added changing out roster swaps and player transfers shape up a team's initial outing with their latest pieces. A minimum participant requirement states that a player needs to have represented a roster in five out of the last ten officials to appear under that banner in the VRS.

Another notable change is the modification multi-stage events have received in terms of their weightage towards VRS points. Events like IEM Cologne, IEM Katowice and BLAST Bounty's initial stages carried no prize pools, but just slots for the next stage of the event, offering hardly any VRS weightage. In the new update, these stages of tournaments will take into account a portion of the main event's prize pool while determining the bounties offered and collected by teams.

In the recent past, a number of teams have declined invites to initial stages of events due to the undermined VRS weightage. The round off the changes, Palestine has been removed from Asia and will now be recognized under the MENA region. However, the VRS is still actively being molded to round off jagged edges. The latest rant comes from tier-2 European teams, stating that the cutoff could impact many teams negatively. Xizt pointed out that being ranked #14 in Europe would be too high for tier-2 invites but too low for tier-1, locking teams in a blind spot.