A change in the Valve Regional Standings rulebook has likely removed the possibility of Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev playing the PGL Singapore Major.
The rule change sees restrictions introduced over ‘region swaps’ in the VRS standings, preventing Counter-Strike teams from representing a new region at a Major immediately after swapping regions.
Valve closes VRS region swap ‘loophole’
Region swaps in the VRS have been a controversial practice, seen by some as a ‘loophole’ to qualify for a Major that was being exploited by cynical organizations not truly invested in the region they represent.
This season, both s1mple’s BC.Game roster and Sashi Esport have made roster changes in attempts to qualify for the Major in the PGL Singapore Major through the Asia VRS after their chances of qualifying through the EU VRS became extremely remote.
Those attempts have now been put to bed after an addition to the VRS Major Supplemental Rulebook, which retroactively removed the ability of the teams to qualify through the Asia VRS.
Valve added the following line to the VRS rulebook regarding Major qualification: “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.”
Tom Lemke, the co-founder of German esports organizations BIG and mousesports (now MOUZ), claimed on social media that the new rule was specifically targeted at Sashi’s recent swap, which added two Australian players to make the most of Anton ‘Anlelele’ Huynh’s Danish/Vietnamese dual nationality to qualify to the Asia VRS.
Lemke posted, “After speaking with Valve they explained to me that Sashi Esport was the straw that broke the camel’s back, specifically the dual citizenship. Crazy.”
Can s1mple and BC.Game still qualify for the Major?
The rule change, interpreted literally, would remove BC.Game from both the EU VRS, where they had been playing until recently, and the Asia VRS, where the team currently resides in the ranking. That would effectively make qualification for the Major specifically impossible this season.
However, BC.Game may have a narrow lifeline to qualify. HLTV shared that Valve stated that teams disqualified by the rule change can “reach out and find a solution.”
HLTV Editor-in-Chief Milan ‘Striker’ Švejda later clarified on social media, “They said that since BCG already made the switch without knowing what the impact would be, they’d consider ignoring their one-time Asia entry to help them stay in the race from Europe.”
That opens up the possibility for BC.Game to return to the EU VRS, where they were last listed in September as 30th in the EU standings. The roster’s probability of making the Major through the EU rankings was vanishingly low even then, and the prospect has only gotten worse with the passage of time and more damaging losses for the roster.
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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