Lewis hinted at an exciting future for CS2 esports

Update: RMR tournaments could be gone in 2025, Richard Lewis hints

The change to the Major qualification system comes amidst other major changes to the circuit in 2025.

Renowned esports journalist and PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 host Richard Lewis claimed yesterday on stream that Valve may discontinue their Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournaments, which serve as the qualifiers for the Majors, in 2025.

The claimed change comes as the Counter-Strike 2 is set to undergo a major overhaul in 2025, with PGL and StarLadder announcing a plethora of tournaments while ESL and BLAST's partnered leagues are set to come an end under Valve's new rules for Counter-Strike esports.

"Partner leagues are dead in 2025 and suddenly we have a major esports tournament every week. StarLadder are back, PGL are back, BLAST, ESL, all the partner leagues are dead. From what I'm hearing, RMRs might be gone."

While Lewis' clip was light on details on how the Major qualifiers may work in future, his mention of "ranking points" is an interesting hint about how teams may qualify for Majors in future. For those with good memories, when Valve first introduced RMR tournaments in 2020, it was originally a series of tournaments that awarded points to qualify teams to the Major.

Valve abandoned this idea after the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 and essentially returned to running Minors in all but name for following Majors, however a return to an open circuit may be the impetus for bringing the concept back to CS.

With 23 S-tier tournaments set to be run in 2025 from a variety of tournament organizers along with dozens of smaller tournaments, the circuit could potentially serve as the pathway directly into the Majors moving forward.

Lewis plans on providing more details in future, and with his exemplary track record, there's good reason to suspect that the future of CS2 esports could be quite exciting.

Update: In a later section of the stream Richard Lewis offered further context that the first Major of 2025 may still feature RMR events due to Valve still working on their ranking system. With this, Lewis expects that Valve's new system will be implemented in 2026 at the latest. We apologize for the inadvertent omission.

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#1(With 1 replies)
April 3, 2024 03:18PM
ThugsBunny268
I don't like that
#3(With 0 replies)
April 3, 2024 03:48PM
RyanFriend
I don't like it because RMRs are fun to go to and do content from.
#2(With 0 replies)
April 3, 2024 03:26PM
MrNorwood
Yeah, I'm not sure I'm keen on this idea.

Of course a lot of it depends on what these tournaments look like, but the lack of opportunities for non-EU teams to participate at events in the last few years doesn't increase my confidence in this idea.
#4(With 2 replies)
April 3, 2024 04:33PM
1ahS
Genuine question. Does richard lewis have much credibility. I know he's still pretty big in the scene, but I feel that he lost a lot of his cred when CS2 leaks first started coming out and alot of what he was saying was false.
#5(With 0 replies)
April 3, 2024 06:35PM
Will
I’m pretty sure everything he leaked was true though. The only thing people point out as wrong is the AI anti-cheat. But considering that players got banned for hitting their DPI button and spinning, along with Overwatch being removed that there probably is an AI AC in place.
#6(With 0 replies)
April 3, 2024 07:12PM
ThugsBunny268
I don't think there was anything he said that was false, new mm, cs2, a primitive version of vac live all in but that's stuff I remember off hand.
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