Valve adds a three-month rule on region changes for Major invites

Valve has moved against late changes of region ahead of a Counter-Strike 2 Major. The publisher of the game has amended its CS Major Supplemental Rulebook so that a roster is eligible for a place in a region only if it did not appear in any other region's list of the Valve Regional Standings in the preceding three calendar months, HLTV reported on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. The change applies to the next Major, in Singapore, whose invitations are less than a month away.

It lands on three teams that had just rebuilt their line-ups to be counted as Asian instead of European: BC.Game, WW and Sashi. HLTV's verdict on those moves was that the update makes them pointless. One of the three was back in the race a day later: on Wednesday, October 7, HLTV reported that Valve had published an exception assigning BC.Game's roster to the Asian region.

One sentence added to the rulebook

A Major is a championship tournament of Valve's own circuit, and its 32 places are not won in qualifiers. They are handed out as invitations, read from the Valve Regional Standings, the publisher's ranking, which the scene calls the VRS. There are three lists, for Europe, the Americas and Asia, and each region has a fixed number of places.

Valve's rulebook says which list a team belongs to. "A roster's Regional Assignment is the region represented by the majority of its players," it states. With five players in a team, three are enough. When the count is tied, the rulebook gives the roster to the region with the larger presence at the Major, in the order Europe, the Americas, Asia.

Until this week nothing in that definition looked at the past. A team could replace two players, cross the three-player line and be counted in another region's list, with the points it had earned elsewhere. The sentence added on October 6 closes that door for Major invitations: three calendar months must pass without the roster appearing in another region's list.

HLTV asked Valve how the period is counted. The answer, as the site reports it, is that the three months are measured back from the moment the Major invitations are issued, not from the day the Major begins. The publisher also confirmed that the rule takes effect for the Singapore Major.

Why Asia became the target

The pressure on the Asian list comes from the way the 32 places are shared. Under Valve's rulebook, a region's allocation follows its results at the previous Major: one invitation to Stage 2 for every team it sent to Stage 3, one invitation to Stage 3 for every team it sent to the playoffs. The stages are the successive rounds of the tournament, and a team invited to a later stage skips the earlier ones.

After the IEM Cologne Major in June, HLTV published the distribution for Singapore.

Five places for Asia is the smallest share, and the region lost its Stage 3 invitation after 9z beat The MongolZ in Cologne, HLTV wrote then. But it takes far fewer points to stand among Asia's first five than among Europe's first 18, and Sashi are the clearest illustration. On October 5 the Danish organization stood 54th in the European list with 1,122 Valve points, HLTV reported, far from any European invitation. The same points would have made it the fifth-highest team in Asia, inside the qualification zone.

Valve released a monthly update of its standings on Monday, October 5, HLTV reported. PGL, the organizer of the Major, announced in April that the list of November 2, 2026 would decide the invitations, for a tournament that runs from November 24 to December 13 with a prize pool of US$1.25 million. HLTV noted at the time that the cut-off had previously fallen about two months before a Major, and that PGL presented the shorter gap as a way to have the latest results reflected in the field.

Three teams, three moves in a few weeks

The switches came one after the other. HLTV wrote on September 30 that BC.Game and WW had both announced roster changes in recent weeks, and Sashi followed on October 5.

BC.Game made what HLTV calls the most notable switch. The team signed the Australian player asap about a month before the deadline. With Senzu and mzinho, two Mongolian players who both used to play for The MongolZ, he gave the roster three players from the Asian region out of five, next to s1mple and Magisk. HLTV wrote on September 30 that the team's chances through the European ranking had been around 5 per cent in its own simulation of the invitations. On October 2, after BC.Game won Group D of ROG JOURNEY with 12 points from five matches, the site reported that they were second in the Asian list and that the same simulation now put them at 95.9 per cent.

WW, a team ranked 123rd by HLTV on September 28, announced changes of the same kind, including the signing of enzero. HLTV described it as fighting 5star and FlyQuest, a team it places in Oceania, for the last provisional Asian place, and wrote that a last-place exit at a recent event looked to have ended its chances.

Sashi came last. The organization announced on Monday, October 5, that TjP, who arrives from THUNDER dOWNUNDER, and Hatz would join, on a temporary basis according to HLTV, and that Cabbi and MistR would step out of the starting line-up for the coming month. The stated aim was to maximize the chances of reaching the Singapore Major. With the two Australians, HLTV wrote, Sashi field three players from the region. A projection by the analyst Mischief, cited by HLTV, still gave the team only a 13 per cent chance.

The reaction that came before the rule

The Sashi announcement drew criticism the same day, which HLTV collected in a separate report. NiKo, the Falcons player, was among those who called on Valve to act so that teams could not use the system this way. In its report on the move itself, HLTV cited Mavrick, the founder of Dfrag, an Australian esports event production company, who argued that Asian and Oceanic Counter-Strike was at risk without intervention at the highest level.

The concern is concrete for the teams already in the list. THUNDER dOWNUNDER, the team TjP left for Sashi, were Asia's fourth-highest-ranked team at the invitation cut-off of the Cologne Major, according to HLTV. Each European roster that enters the Asian top five pushes one of the region's own teams out of it.

The top of the list was already unsettled. HLTV wrote on September 30 that The MongolZ, invited directly to Stage 3 at each of the last three Majors, were no longer sure of being Asia's first seed, having not replaced Senzu and mzinho, and that the Chinese team TYLOO had the better chance of leading the region at the cut-off. Whoever leads it will start in Stage 2.

HLTV also recalled that G2 and Liquid had swapped malbsMd and NertZ earlier in the year.

What Valve told the teams, and the exception that followed

For the rosters that had already moved, Valve's answer to HLTV on October 6 left one opening. Teams that changed region ahead of the Singapore Major are out of the run for it under the new text, the publisher said, unless they contact Valve and a solution is found.

BC.Game took that route. The team's coach, TaZ, said it would appeal and respect Valve's final decision, HLTV reported on October 7. The same evening the site wrote that Valve had updated the list of exceptions to its tournament operating requirements: the roster of asap, Magisk, mzinho, s1mple and Senzu is assigned to the Asian region and is eligible for a Major invitation, although the three calendar months have not passed. HLTV reports no condition attached to the exception.

The consequences therefore differ from one team to the next. BC.Game, which had gone from around 5 per cent to 95.9 per cent in HLTV's simulation, keep the benefit of their move. HLTV's report of October 7 mentions no exception for WW or Sashi. Sashi's change was announced for the coming month only. WW were still fighting for the last provisional Asian place on September 30.

None of the three is barred from the rest of the calendar. Because the rule is limited to Major invitations, HLTV notes, the teams remain eligible for invitations to events outside the Major circuit.

The dates that remain

The calendar announced by PGL in April is unchanged. The standings of November 2 decide the 32 invitations. November 6 is the last day for invited teams to confirm their details. The Major opens on November 24 in Singapore and ends on December 13, with a third-place match on the final day before a best-of-five grand final, a series won by the first team to take three maps.

Sashi's new five were due to play their first match together on Wednesday, October 7, in a closed qualifier, HLTV reported before the rule was published, with a tournament in Stockholm the following week. What those results can no longer bring, as the rulebook now reads, is a place in Singapore through the Asian list.

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