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Valve today posted a blog entry, where they announced plans for the PGL Major Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournaments, coaching changes, and new stickers celebrating the teams that would have made it to the cancelled Rio Major event last year. Valve also confirmed that 24 teams will be invited to the Major, from six different regions bassed upon RMR points amassed during 2021. Furthermore, there will be no Minors in 2021, only RMR events.


Let's start with the RMR related news announced;

  • All previous totals are wiped to 0. Although teams from last year will get bonus points, those who made it to Legends entry will start with 600, Challengers 300 & contenders with 100.
  • Valve will now allow teams to register a substitute player separate from the coach. The substitute can be any player who is not registered to participate or substitute for another team already.
  • When a player gets substituted during an event, there will be a penalty. This only applies on inititial substitution, and not when they're brought back in.
  • During online matches, only players can be in the main event room and on server. No staff, including coach, can be in the same room, or be able to communicate with the team during a match.

The latter is likely announced due to recent news about certain teams playing the stream of the match on a monitor viewable to the coach. This will essentially get around that issue.


The other major news from this blog entry is that coaches who were recently punished for exploits will now be banned from attending some Majors. The full story is that last year, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) handed out bans to coaches who had been caught using a glitch within Counter Strike that gave them unfair advantages oin viewing opponents moves. Valve has now confirmed those coaches will be barred from Valve sponsored Majors too. This will depend upon how many demerits ESIC handed the coach, and will vary between 1 Major missed for a coach with 2 ESIC demerits all the way up to being permanently barred for coaches with 6 or more demerits.


Valve are clearly starting to gear up towards the upcoming PGL Major in October & November. So we may have some balance changes made to the game in the upcoming months, so players have plenty of time to get used to them before the Major, as generally speaking Valve try to avoid any major changes too close to the Majors.


If you'd like to browse the stickers released as a celebration of the 2020 RMR events and the Majors that never were, you can view them on the Steam Market here.