StarLadder has been announced as the next host of the Major qualifiers for the CIS region, where this competition will add up to 2000 RMR points to the total for the teams.
Five teams have been directly invited to the event, those being Spirit, Natus Vincere, Virtus.pro, Gambit and Akuma. Whereas K23, Entropiq, forZe & Nemiga have been invited to the closed qualifiers, where they're joined by EC Kyiv & ex-Marlian who progressed through the first open qualifier. Two further teams will enter the closed qualifier from the second open round scheduled to start in a few days. After all the qualifiers are dealt with, the top five teams from the closed event will go through the main StarLadder CIS RMR 2021 event.
StarLadder have outlined their plans to address things raised after the first CIS RMR event, the EPIC League from two week ago. The following is taken directly from their announcement which you can read in full here. StarLadder have pledged to ensure the following;
- We will set at least 110 seconds delay on all of our GOTV,
- We will not provide data to any 3rd party with a delay of less than 20 seconds,
- All matches of StarLadder CIS RMR will be played on the FACEIT platform, using FACEIT's anti-cheat software,
- Voice communications of all teams will be recorded for every game,
- Webcams of the players will capture what is happening on the player's screen; this video feed will also be recorded for every game
These pledges directly reflect the concerns raised by 14 of the 16 teams that took part in EPIC League, which also saw the team Akuma have concerns and suspicions raised about them, which ESIC are still investigating.
StarLadder is well known in the CSGO scene, founded in 2001, they hosted the main event of any CSGO calendar, the Valve-sponsored second Major of 2019, the Berlin Major, as well as four regional minors in the build-up to the event. They've also hosted tournaments such as the StarSeries & i-League.
