Valve introduce a slew of changes to Tournament Operation Requirements

Valve have released a series of updates and changes to their Tournament Operation Requirements (TOR) today, with the changes focusing on tier-one event invites, tier-two event requirements, and Wildcard invites.

The most notable of these changes see the minimum number of VRS invites for tier-one tournaments increased from 16 to 20 teams. As pointed out by former HLTV and Dust2.us writer Collin "CarbonDogma" Davis, the intention seems to be pushing tournament organizers to host 24-team tournament teams as 20 teams don't fit neatly into any currently used formats. This is potentially to make tier-one tournaments align more closely with Valve Majors while also encouraging TOs to hold more qualifiers.

Valve have also mandated invites for tier-two tournaments start at Rank 12 on the VRS rather than Rank 9. The goal here seems to be Valve encouraging TOs to invite lower-ranked teams and more evenly spread invites across the scene, addressing concerns from organizations Endpoint that they had effectively been frozen out of the scene.

Valve have also addressed criticism of how events were required to be seeded in the TOR, making it so that seeding is no longer tied to the Invite Date used for events. This is important as invites are often handed out months before the event making them relatively outdated by the time of the event.

A final big change has made Wildcard invites far more strict, requiring that a Wildcard team meet the following conditions

• A roster is only eligible for one such invite if it is ranked lower than 12 on all VRS lists.

• It includes at least 3 players who individually were members of a top 12 Roster on an Invite VRS List at any time during the preceding 6 months.

• It has placed first or second place in any Tournament, of equal or lesser tier than the one issuing the invite, during the preceding 6 months.

This should make Wildcard invites even more rare than they already are, with them being almost exclusively reserved for new teams.

You can find the new version of the TOR here.