‘Strike’ is a (not so) regular column written by HLTV Editor-in-chief Milan “Striker” Švejda, which mainly focuses on new realities of a Valve-regulated circuit.
Over the past week, Major qualification buzz has once again taken center stage with just a few weeks remaining before the all-important PGL Singapore invite deadline hits.
A big war rages on in Europe in particular with underdogs going from open LAN to open LAN and several big teams once again under pressure, as FaZe are reliving the nightmare from the previous cycle while NAVI’s series of underwhelming results put them in danger of missing their first-ever Major.
But instead of the potential elimination of two of the world’s most popular teams, the biggest point of discussion has had little to do with the actual results.
It was several teams’ attempt to avoid that war altogether and seek a much easier path to the season-ending event as WW, BC.Game and Sashi switched regions from Europe to Asia at the last moment.
That was met with a swift response from Valve, who saw the proverbial floodgates open and decided to close them shut, only to leave a BC.Game-sized sliver open afterwards.
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Valve issues exception for BC.Game to qualify for Singapore Major through Asia
The drastic move that came less than a month before the deadline, and the subsequent exception, was met with a mixed response: those sympathetic to the organizations’ plight of signing new contracts only to see their efforts in vain on one side, and those against taking advantage of a smaller region on the other.
I, the devil’s advocate by nature, sit firmly in the middle.
I wasn’t surprised to see sudden action being taken, or the fashion in which it was. To understand this is how Valve functions, you just have to look back to the seeding rule change in the middle of the Shanghai Major qualifiers.
Perfect World had originally said qualifier standings would determine teams’ seeding into different stages at the Major, but Valve’s position was that the VRS should do so and stepped in after most of the RMR had already taken place, even though it meant BIG would start the Major a stage earlier than their result warranted.
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Valve admits to “unfortunate miscommunication” in Major seeding debacle
The writing for this move was also on the wall ever since Valve plugged the DRILLAS loophole, where you could qualify for a Major from one region, but then change it by a pre/mid-Major substitution.
If the developers see a serious enough problem, they will fix it regardless of the consequences. The problem here is, the consequences could have been avoided if they had closed the loophole when it was already exposed in the previous Major cycle by Liquid, who brought in Mario “malbsMd” Samayoa for Guy “NertZ” Iluz at the last minute to switch from Europe to the Americas.
That’s where I sympathize with those who argue that the rules of the game should be clear before the game starts. No matter what you think about how any of these three teams acted, it was a tried and tested strategy that was not addressed after it was already used with clear intent behind it.
However, the second-best time to address it was as soon as it became abundantly clear that this was the optimal way to qualify for a Major. That is how Valve explained their thought process to me when I contacted them to clarify their position, and it makes sense.
There’s a difference between Liquid, a one-time occurrence where a North American organization returned to its home region with a single change, and the rather extreme example of Sashi, who suddenly realized their player has been playing under the wrong flag for years and brought in two new ones in a single swoop to make the switch.
It would have been a disaster if all three teams succeeded in qualifying for the Major, and Asia would have lost three of its five spots to teams that had never properly competed in the region.
Instead, it loses one spot, and that’s where we arrive at the exception. What’s so different about BC.Game that makes them impervious to the new rule?
One, unlike the other two teams, BC.Game didn’t make use of a player nationality switch. Two, they had disqualified themselves without knowing it as the only team to enact the switch on paper by playing enough matches with Tyson “asap” Paterson to register in the new region. Three, BC.Game didn’t sign just any Asian players; they signed two that had just played for the region’s best team in recent memory.
I’m aware that the last point comes off as rather sentimental, but I think it helps underline the crucial difference that separates BC.Game from Sashi and WW. You can hardly argue that a team with Azbayar “Senzu” Munkhbold and Ayush “mzinho” Batbold in it, regardless of who the third Asian player is, shouldn’t be given a chance to represent the region the Mongolians helped reach new heights. It makes their case look more like Liquid’s than that of DRILLAS.
Originally, Valve told me they’d be willing to consider ignoring BC.Game’s one-time entry in the Asian VRS, as they were the only ones who had already disqualified themselves on paper. That would have allowed the team to revert the asap change and try to qualify from Europe, which would have been a next-to-impossible task.
Instead, they were allowed to continue from Asia. Perhaps the third point is what changed Valve’s mind, along with BC.Game CEO’s insistence that his Asian players are “on the longest contracts.”
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BC.Game CEO: “Our Asian players are the ones with the longest contracts, we are here to stay”
Finally, let’s talk about the rule itself, which goes:
From the Major Supplemental Rulebook
“A roster is only eligible for a Regional Assignment if they did not appear in any other region’s VRS list in the preceding three calendar months.”
What constitutes a roster? What does appearing on another region’s VRS list mean exactly? And does this really plug the hole, or could it still be abused?
Valve’s explanation to me was: “If any of the lineups [listed in a team’s match history] appeared in more than one regional VRS invitation list in the preceding three, then they are not eligible for a regional invite to the Major.”
They also further clarified that by a roster appearing on an invitation list they mean the final lineup that shows up on the overview on monthly rankings.
As an example, BC.Game’s match history on the Asia VRS from October features the lineup electroNic, Magisk, mzinho, s1mple and Senzu. That same lineup also appears in September’s invitation VRS in Europe, which means they’d be considered disqualified under the new rule.
That makes switching regions very difficult, but not impossible. A team could manipulate its VRS roster in such a way that it would hide the true roster from the one that appears as the final one (updating it with another player just in time for the new monthly release in some tournament that may not be very important) and go around the new rule.
It also currently disqualifies teams that legitimately change regions but not to the degree where they remove all their previous region’s match history, which is not ideal.
And if this rule was to make its way into the year-long circuit as a whole (and there’s good reason to believe it will), it would inevitably lead to unnecessary mistakes on the organizer side when it comes to handing out invitations for their tournaments.
But is there a better way?
Well, yes: to handle this at the ranking level. Valve could leave the global ranking as is and adjust the regional lists so that they only consider matches in which the team featured at least three players hailing from the respective region, ignoring all others.
This would make it so that teams who change regions would not lose out on their potential global invites, but they would have to start from scratch for regional ones.
And for good measure, any player that changes nationalities should be treated as a new player rather than the same, to eliminate that loophole entirely.
Ultimately, changing regions shouldn’t be a problem. If a team assembles a predominantly Asian roster, it should be free to compete in Asia with the points it earned with that core. What it shouldn’t be able to do is carry over points earned in Europe and use them to leapfrog teams that have spent the season competing in Asia.
That’s the distinction Valve is trying to make with the new rule, only in a rather unnecessarily limiting and complicated way. Addressing the issue at the ranking level would remove the need to scrutinize past invitation lists, or decide which region switches are genuine enough to deserve special treatment.
In my eyes, Valve was right to intervene, even if it should have done so months ago. But rather than continuing to patch loopholes as teams discover them, the developers would be better off removing the incentive to exploit them in the first place.
Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before we’re having this conversation again. The loophole might be different, but the underlying problem will be the same.
