ESL One Rio Major Canceled; Disqualified Teams to Lose RMR Points

Valve has canceled the ESL One Rio Major that was scheduled to take place in November 2020. The game developer has also announced punishments for teams that have abused the coaching bug. All disqualified teams will have their RMR points reset with immediate effect. This decision affects MIBR and Hard Legion for now, but more teams could join the list. 

We’re not going to ask players and fans to risk their health in order to attend a Major while the pandemic still poses a threat to travelers. Therefore, we have made the painful decision to cancel the November Major.

Earlier this year, Valve postponed the ESL one Rio Major. The global pandemic and the accompanying travel restrictions made it near impossible for teams to travel to Brazil for the CS:GO Major. The CS:GO Major moved to November with an increased prize pool and a unique qualification format. Teams had to earn RMR points through various third-party events throughout the year. 

Unfortunately, the global health situation has only worsened with time. The possibility of organizing a large-scale gathering at Rio seems unlikely and as such Valve has taken the ‘painful’ decision of canceling the CS:GO Major. 

What About Future CS:GO Majors?

Valve is also non-committal on future CS:GO Majors. The first CS:GO Major of 2021 was to take place from May 10 to May 23 with a million-dollar prize pool. The latest announcement says Valve is holding off on organizing CS:GO Majors till the global situation improves.

First, we’re going to hold off on scheduling Majors until, at a minimum, Regional Major Ranking (RMR) LAN events are safe to hold around the world. Until then, we expect to continue to hold online RMR events to keep track of the best teams in each region.

 The RMR events will still continue allowing teams and fans top tier CS:GO action. 

Coaching

Finally, Valve talks about teams and coaches that have been exploiting the coaching bug. There has been an exploit in CS:GO wherein team coaches can hold a static camera angle on any part of the map. This allows them a complete vision of the particular area including the enemy’s movement and positioning. Several coaches have admitted to using this bug, some as far back as 2018. The bug exists since 2016 and recent investigations by Michal Slowinski and Steve have found evidence of coaches from tier 1 teams abusing the bug to gain an unfair advantage. 

Michal did the work for free initially and did not ask for or expect a payment, but we are of course going to compensate him for his work and have talked to him about it already. – Ulrich Schulze.

Any team that was disqualified for abusing the bug will have their RMR points reset. For now, this decision affects Hard Legion and MIBR. There is a chance of other team coach names coming up in these investigations.

As for taking action against individual coaches, we’re going to wait until we get a complete picture of the extent of the bug abuse and the punishments handed down by third parties. Regardless of those penalties, mid-match coaching will always be a tempting opportunity for some teams to violate the integrity of the match. So we may also consider limitations to coaching.

Valve has also promised further action on individual coaches, including limitations on mid-match coaching. 

DreamHack recently announced a new $250,000 online CS:GO tournament in December. 

Rohan

The author

Esports journalist. An esports fan, former wannabe pro and occasional angry young man. You can find him trying to climb the Dota 2 MMR or just chilling in Rocket League. Or maybe building an entire city in Cities: Skylines. The current mood is always a surprise.

More articles from Rohan

Login With:

Subscribe

Login

Notify of

new follow-up comments new replies to my comments

{} [+]

Name*

Email

{} [+]

Name*

Email

0 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments