ESL agrees to new Valve guidelines, will change revenue sharing model

Earlier today, Valve issued a news release outlining a dramatic change to Counter-Strike's tournament models, forcing every large-scale event to select its participants from open qualifiers or Valve's ranking system. This essentially phases out partner teams, both from BLAST's ecosystem and ESL's Louvre Agreement.

In a Tweet by Ulrich Schulze, senior vice president of Game Ecosystems at the ESL FACEIT Group, he has announced that ESL will invite teams through rankings and qualifiers from 2025 onwards, when Valve's guidelines come into effect.

In addition, the revenue sharing model of the Louvre Agreement will be expanded from all partner teams to all participating teams, with more to be announced from both Valve and tournament organizers in the coming months.

According to Schulze, ESL's flagship tournaments, Cologne, Katowice, and likely the ESL Pro League as well, have already moved to the new system.