Valve's conflict-of-interest rules for CS2 teams and organizers

A tournament is only worth watching if every team in it starts from the same line. In most sports a league or a federation guards that line. In Counter-Strike 2 the guard is Valve, the company that makes the game. Valve runs very few tournaments itself, but it licenses the ones other companies run, and it writes the conditions they must accept. A good part of those conditions deals with one question: what happens when the organizer of an event, a team in it, or a sponsor behind both are tied to each other by money.

The question took a concrete form in February 2026. On February 12, HLTV reported that BC.Game, a team that carries the name of its title sponsor, would not play BC Game Masters, a tournament under the same brand, and published Valve's guidance on why. That case is one application of a wider set of rules, and most of those rules are not about sponsors at all. They are about owners, managers, loans, payments, invitations and disclosure.

This guide sets out what those rules say in Valve's published texts: which documents apply to whom, what counts as a conflict, how an organizer gets a tie approved, what a team signs before a Major, how sponsors and betting operators fit in, and what Valve can do when the rules are broken.

Valve, Tournament Operation Requirements, section 5.3 on potential conflicts of interest.

Three texts, three audiences

Valve's rules for competitive Counter-Strike sit in three documents, and each speaks to a different party.

The first is the Limited Game Tournament License. It is the contract an organizer accepts, through a sign-up form, to run a tournament in a Valve game and broadcast it. The license is royalty-free, revocable, non-transferable and non-exclusive, and the games and territory it covers come from the form. It sets conditions on content, sponsors, anti-cheat, betting and financial transparency. An organizer that wants to work at a larger scale than this license allows has to ask Valve for a broader one, the next text says.

The second is the Tournament Operation Requirements, a rulebook Valve publishes in its public repository of Counter-Strike rules. It applies to Counter-Strike tournaments and is written for the tournament operator, the company that runs the event. Its foreword states the principle behind the whole text: the game is at its best when teams compete on a level playing field, and Valve thinks Counter-Strike should be an open sport. The document says the version that applies to a tournament is the one current at that tournament's deadline for publishing its additional information, a set of details every event must make public in advance.

The third is the Major Supplemental Rulebook. A Major is meant, in the rulebook's words, to bring the best Counter-Strike players in the world together at a LAN, and this rulebook lists the rules that must be identical at every Major, whoever organizes it. The rest of a Major's rules come from its organizer. Unlike the other two texts, the supplemental rulebook speaks directly to teams and players: it contains an agreement they must accept, word for word, before they can play.

The license and the operation requirements look at the organizer's side of a tie; the Major agreement looks at the team's side.

Why ranked tournaments matter

The operation requirements divide tournaments into two kinds. A ranked tournament, in the document's definition, is one whose outcome generates data used by the Valve Regional Standings, usually shortened to VRS: the ranking Valve publishes and uses to decide which teams are invited to its biggest events. An unranked tournament feeds nothing into that ranking.

The difference has consequences. An unranked tournament may invite or select teams by any process its organizer chooses, but its money is capped: the total compensation of a single unranked event, prize pool and any other payments included, may not exceed US$100,000, and an operator that runs several in a year may not exceed US$250,000 across all of them.

A ranked tournament has no such cap, but it loses the freedom to choose. Its invitations come from the ranking. The operator chooses which VRS lists it uses, how many teams it invites from each and from which rank it starts, and the text requires at least two rosters from any list it uses. Invitations then go out in rank order, using the latest standings on the invitation date, and a declined place passes to the next roster down. A top-level event, which the document calls Tier 1, must make at least 20 direct invitations starting from the roster ranked first.

Valve's foreword names this as one of the rules' aims: direct team invitations are limited so that teams compete on a level playing field. The conflict rules deal with the rest: who owns what, who is paid how, and who can be excluded.

The unit the rules protect is also worth noting. The operation requirements define a roster as five specific athletes, whatever team organization they are tied to now or later. Invitations follow the five players and their ranking, not the brand on their shirts.

What counts as a business relationship

The heart of the matter is section 5.3 of the operation requirements, headed potential conflicts of interest. It says that the tournament operator and its staff may not have any business relationship with any participant unless Valve approves the relationship and it is publicly disclosed. A participant, in the document, is a team, a roster or an athlete.

The section gives four examples of a business relationship: shared management, shared ownership of entities, licensing, and loans. It defines the term to cover relationships tied to Valve's games and others, and calls each one an entanglement. The examples are a list, not a limit. Sponsorship is not among them.

The rule does not forbid ties outright. It forbids hidden ties and ties Valve has not accepted. An organizer that also owns a stake in a team, lends money to one, licenses a brand from one or shares a manager with one may still run a ranked event, provided the tie goes through the procedure below and stays public.

How a tie gets approved

The procedure in section 5.3 has five stages, each with its own deadline. It applies to disclosures made after the date the operator's agreement with Valve takes effect.

Silence counts as approval in this system: Valve does not have to sign anything for a disclosed tie to stand. But the approval can be withdrawn. At its sole discretion, Valve may require the operator to remove the entanglement within a reasonable period, which may not exceed two weeks, or terminate its agreement with the operator at no cost or penalty to Valve.

Two features stand out. The public part of the disclosure is not optional: a tie reported only to Valve does not meet the rule, because the text requires both. And the burden sits on the organizer. A team in a tie with an organizer has its own duties, but only at a Major, under the agreement described further down.

Paying every team the same way

Conflicts of interest are not only about ownership. A tournament can favor a team simply by paying it more. Section 5 of the operation requirements closes that door in three steps.

Section 5.1, on non-exclusivity, bars the operator from direct or indirect agreements that artificially stop teams, rosters or athletes from playing other tournaments. The one exception is the period a team is on site at a LAN, an event played with all teams in the same venue, within the event's published dates.

Section 5.2, on non-discriminatory treatment, requires every agreement between the operator and a participant to be non-discriminatory. Financial support must be equal for all participants, or based on an objective, merit-based measure applied to everyone in the same way. Section 5.2.1 adds that all participants at the same stage of a tournament receive equal treatment in every aspect of the event: accommodation, facilities, preparation time and technical support must match in quality, duration and availability. The license carries a parallel clause for athletes: their agreements must be non-discriminatory and identical, and any financial support equal or tied to an objective measure applied equally.

The third step is publication. Section 4.3.2 lists what the additional information must contain, and money is part of it: the prize pool and the rules for its distribution, and, when the operator pays teams, rosters or athletes in other ways, such as guaranteed appearance payments or revenue shares in sponsorships or media rights, comprehensive information on all of it. A ranked event's prize table must also follow a simple logic: a lower placing never pays more than a higher one, and equal placings in parallel events pay the same.

Disqualification rules written in advance

An organizer that wants to keep a team out has one legitimate route, and the text makes it narrow. Section 5.4, on invite exceptions, allows operators to have rules that disqualify participants for misconduct, cheating infractions, being flagged by esports bodies as a matchmaking fix risk, or other integrity or compliance issues.

Two conditions come with that power. The disqualification rules must be published in the additional information, before invitations are sent, and the details of any disqualification decision must be published when it is taken. Section 4.3.2 then sets the standard such rules must meet. They must be transparent, based on specific objective criteria, and applied whatever the roster or the circumstances. The text puts it in one sentence: "Disqualification rules cannot be selectively applied at the discretion of the Tournament Operator."

Requiring the grounds to be published in advance, and every decision to be published as it happens, means any exclusion can be checked against the rule that justified it.

What a team signs before a Major

At a Major the rules reach teams and players directly. The supplemental rulebook says players and teams must accept its agreement, verbatim, to take part. The organizer distributes it, collects signatures or a legally binding equivalent from every registered participant and team representative, and delivers them to Valve by the start of the event.

Section 2.1 of the agreement states that teams and players should not have any financial interest in the success of any team they compete against. Each signatory affirms that it has no conflict of interest with any other participating team or its players, and the text lists what counts: any business entanglement such as shared management, shared ownership of entities, licensing and loans. The list is the same as the one the operation requirements apply to organizers.

Section 2.2 turns the affirmation into a continuing duty. Each signatory states that it knows of no current conflict. If one exists, or arises during the event, it must immediately give the details to the Counter-Strike development team at Valve, explaining the relationship and its plan for resolving it.

Disclosure is again public. The rulebook's list of deliverables makes the organizer responsible for collecting any conflict-of-interest disclosures that result from registration and making them publicly available, due at the start of the event. Section 1.5 of the agreement adds a narrower warranty: each team guarantees that its players can grant the rights release the agreement contains without conflicting with commitments made to or by the team.

The rulebook does not say who rules on a disclosed conflict or what penalty follows one. Its only stated remedy is the resolution plan of section 2.2, and how a given case ends depends on the facts and on Valve.

Shared ownership in practice

One example of these rules at work in the market is the sale of Complexity in 2024. On March 1 of that year, HLTV reported that GameSquare had sold the Complexity brand to Global Esports Properties, an investor group led by the organization's founder, Jason Lake, in a deal the outlet put at US$10.36 million, most of it paid over three years. GameSquare was then weeks away from completing its acquisition of FaZe Clan.

HLTV explained what would have happened otherwise. Had both brands stayed with one owner, FaZe and Complexity, which both fielded Counter-Strike teams in many of the same events, would have been in a direct conflict of interest. The outlet wrote that this is prohibited in Valve's Major rulebook as well as in the rules of ESL, one of the main tournament organizers. GameSquare's chief executive, Justin Kenna, noted in the same report that many leagues have rules on the ownership of more than one team.

The Major agreement as Valve publishes it forbids a financial interest in an opponent rather than a second team as such, and it contains no rule limiting an organization to one roster. HLTV's reading in 2024 was that one owner for two teams meeting in the same events falls under that ban.

Sponsors and title sponsors

The texts say less about sponsors than about owners, and the gap is what Valve's February guidance filled.

The Major rulebook has one rule on title sponsors, the brands that give a team its commonly known name. Team names and logos must be registered as they are commonly seen in the team's own media and in third-party esports media. When several teams whose commonly known names share the same title sponsor qualify, only one of them may use that sponsor at the event.

For tournaments, the guidance came through the press. On February 12, 2026, HLTV published Valve's answer to its question about BC.Game and BC Game Masters. A Valve representative said that Valve does not distinguish between a team's title sponsor and the team's ownership, even when these are separate entities. In Valve's words, as HLTV printed them: "We would not accept a team's title sponsor/brand also being a sponsor of the tournament at any level."

HLTV introduced the guidance as Valve's general position, not a clause of a rulebook. Read with section 5.3, it extends the shared-ownership logic to brands: a sponsor that names a team is treated as if it owned it, so the same brand cannot also pay for the event.

The last two rows of the guidance show where the line falls. Visibility of a tournament's sponsor on teams is acceptable; an ordinary service contract is acceptable once public. What is excluded is a brand on both sides of the same competition, with money flowing to the event and its name on a team in it.

Betting operators and the market

Valve's license treats betting operators as sponsors subject to a legality test, and adds betting restrictions of its own on the people inside a tournament.

Section 2.4 of the license, on compliance, bars the organizer from distributing illegal material and from advertising illegal goods, services or activities. A betting sponsor is acceptable only if the operator is officially licensed by the authorities of the targeted territories, or explicitly permitted under local law through a foreign betting license. A territory counts as targeted when its official language is offered on an officially licensed video feed of the tournament and the feed is not geo-blocked there.

Section 3.4 of the license, on anti-cheat and betting, addresses insiders. The organizer must bar its own employees and contractors from betting on any aspect of the tournament, and its agreements with teams must bar athletes and team staff from betting on matches their team plays in. The same section requires Valve Anti-Cheat or equally robust software, monitoring of player behavior, investigation of cheating reports, and reports of substantial suspicions to Valve and, where relevant, to a competent authority.

A neighboring clause, section 2.4(e), keeps out a different category: sponsors whose revenue comes from activities that violate Valve's agreements or local law, or relies on Valve's game economies, and it names case-opening and skin trading sites among the sponsors it excludes. It is a sponsor rule rather than a conflict rule, and it reaches what appears in broadcasts, logos on player jerseys included.

The territorial test decides which operators may appear at all; the insider ban keeps the people who run or play a match from staking money on its result.

Who enforces the rules

Valve is the enforcer, and its tools are contractual. Under section 5.3 it can order a tie removed within two weeks or end its agreement with the operator. Under section 6.2 of the license, either party may terminate with or without cause on ten days' written notice, and Valve may terminate immediately, without notice, if the licensee breaches the agreement; it may also seek an injunction.

Valve also has a right to look. Section 3.7 of the license lets it ask the organizer for its revenue and funding sources and for a list of the attending teams, including any business affiliations with them. A tie the organizer did not disclose can therefore be asked about directly.

At a Major the rulebook goes further. In its anti-cheat section, Valve reserves the right to disqualify any player, team, broadcaster, commentator or producer in its sole discretion, and the organizer must act immediately on notice. People barred from the event may not be employed by or partnered with the organizer, streaming partners included, and may not enter team or staff-only areas.

The operation requirements end their foreword with a practical channel: questions and requests for exceptions go to Valve's Counter-Strike team in writing, under the subject of the requirements. Exceptions are granted by Valve, not by the organizer.

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