Valve has released a set of rules for majors

Valve has released a comprehensive set of Major rules for tournament operators. In particular, the developers have made several important changes to the way in which invitations are issued and outlined a number of key rules that they expect to be followed at large tournaments and RMR qualifiers for majors.

The document covers a large number of issues, the most important of which are a number of clarifications to the rules for conducting RMR tournaments, which over the past two years have led to serious inconsistencies not only between regions, but also between series of tournaments within the same RMR cycle.

One of the biggest changes for upcoming Majors is how participants are determined. Valve has abandoned the point system used in the 2020 and 2021 RMR cycles, as now there will be only one RMR tournament before each Major, which determines the composition of the main championship participants. In addition, Valve introduced the so-called rosterlock, which prohibits teams from making changes to their lineups between the RMR tournament and the Major.

However, Valve officially announced the unification of the regions:

• Europe.
• America.
• Asia.

In the event that RMR tournaments are held online, a system with five regions will be used:

• Europe.
• North America.
• South America.
• Asia.
• Oceania.

Regions will be awarded spots based on their performance in the previous Major. Teams that reach the Champions stage will secure their region a spot in the Legends stage, while teams that reach the Legends stage will secure their region a spot in the Challengers stage. Finally, the places in the Contender stage will remain unchanged: three each in Europe and North America, and two each in Asia. If teams decide to change regions, they will move their invite to the new region.

Distribution of places between regions at PGL Major Antwerp 2022:

• Europe - 7 Legends, 6 Challengers, 3 Contenders.
• America - 1 Legend, 2 Challengers, 3 Contenders.
• Asia - 2 Contenders.

A team's region is determined by the nationality of the majority of its players. In case of equality, the team chooses its own region.

Requirements for a team applying for participation in the Major:

• The squad must include 5 players ("Main squad").
• The composition of the team may additionally include 1 coach.
• The team may optionally include 1 substitute player.
• The coach and the reserve game may be the same person.

At the same time, Valve has determined the format for holding RMR tournaments and majors. In particular, the developers approved the holding of the Challengers and Contenders stages in the Swiss format. In addition, all matches, with the exception of decisive ones, must be played in the BO3 format. At the same time, the format of the RMR tournaments is determined by the number of participating teams. To ensure that the groups are as similar as possible to each other in strength, the highest and lowest ranked teams are paired up and placed in the same group, a process that continues for each successive group.

Each team may substitute a player with its registered substitute once during the event, subject to the following cases:

• A team may make a substitution between matches for any reason.
• A team may only make a substitution during a match or between maps in the event of a medical emergency.
• Once a substitution has been made, a team may continue to play with a substitute until they decide to return to their original squad.
• Once a team returns to the starting roster, it cannot substitute again for any reason and must play shorthanded or automatically lose.

In addition to staff, only five players and a pre-registered team coach are allowed in the competition area during competition matches. Coaches must not communicate with players by any means of communication at any time, except during warm-ups, breaks and tactical timeouts. Coaches who wish to call a timeout must do so by notifying an administrator. In addition, Valve has officially banned coaches from contacting players in any way, including physical or indirect contact.

As a reminder, the venue for the Spring Major became known the day before. From May 9 to 22, PGL Major Antwerp 2022 will be held with a prize pool of $1,000,000.