The race for Cologne has revealed too many loopholes in the VRS system, and it’s time for someone to act to close them all for good.

The Major race has reached its conclusion, so, on behalf of the entire Counter-Strike community, I’d like to extend our eternal gratitude to Mischief and Jesper Larsen. The two VRS nerds have become the cornerstones of the Major race, keeping us as informed as possible throughout, and without them, we’d frankly all be absolutely lost.

Well, except for messioso, that is.

But is that actually a good thing? Sure, it might be for them, they’ve become incredibly respected figures within CS - but what about the layman? What about the average fan, who, in the wake of the death of the RMRs, now needs to be following two (no offense) random people on Twitter just to have any idea of who will actually be making it to the biggest event of the season?

And what of the other issues? The dropping out of tournaments, the mad dash for points and the frantically changing percentages, the fact that HLTV - God bless them for it - are left to be the custodians of the entire VRS system?

The current Major races we see might be exciting, and it does serve as evidence for the success of the VRS system. I’m not about to pretend I don’t enjoy it, or that I want the gauntlet of the RMRs to return, but there are things we need to discuss, because the Major race is downright ugly, too.

And this Major race in particular has exposed some serious issues with the entire circuit.

In layman’s terms

The most obvious problem - but also the one that might be the hardest to fix - is that the Major race is actually just way too hard to follow. If not for the aforementioned Twitter posters, there would genuinely be no one who had any clue who was actually going to make it or not.

And that’s a big deal.

Now, this doesn’t mean we’re advocating for the return of the RMRs, because we’re not. The RMRs were crap. They were a nightmare for TOs to run, and they often made it so that some of the best teams didn’t even qualify. Not just that, but they also only really worked in Europe, the slots available to the Asian and Americas regions made their formats nothing short of ridiculous.

But.

The RMRs were easy to follow. They were a string of consecutive games, at one event per region, where you knew who was in or out by the score next to their name. In the modern day, we’re left with a ton of games, over a ton of tournaments, where you can only assume who is in or out, or even within a chance or without a chance, because Mischief has run his gazillionth simulation.

How is the average fan meant to keep up with that? In fact, how is the hardcore fan meant to keep up with that?

They don’t. Because they can’t.

It’s honestly ridiculous some of the things that can happen in the final moments leading up to the cut-off. At one point, MIBR and Liquid were constantly trading places in the Americas region, without either even playing, due to recalculations of former games they had already played.

Over in Europe, SINNERS and Alliance had both put themselves in fantastic positions, but were left to wait to see if their rivals rose to the challenge or fell at the final hurdle as to whether they’d make it to the Major or not.

That wait, and the necessity to constantly be spreadsheet-watching as a result of it, is nothing short of miserable.

This is also without mentioning the moments we’ve lost as a result of the death of RMRs and the sheer number of tournaments we now have to follow instead. The sheer joy of watching a team no one expected to qualify for the Major make it, the agony of a team falling in the RMR. That joy, that memory, is now no longer a part of Counter-Strike. I can’t help but feel a little sad about that.

To event, or not to event

Then we get to FaZe Clan. To whom I’d like to make one thing clear: f-ck FaZe Clan, all my homies hate FaZe Clan.

That isn’t just because their team is awful, or the fact that they failed to make changes despite it being so apparent they needed them, even with their run in Budapest, it’s because of the fact that they aren’t even going to be in Cologne, even though they forfeited games in their pathetic attempt to be there.

I won’t lie to you, I watched their final match against BIG at HLC wherever-the-f-ck with a huge smile on my face. I had that smile on my face because FaZe didn’t just deserve to lose as a consequence for the last six months of their existence, they deserved to lose because they were even at the event in the first place.

For those of you who are unaware, FaZe were never meant to be at HLC, they were meant to be at PGL Bucharest, having already qualified for the Major with a successful run at DraculaN. But that didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen because they lost to fnatic - a crime in itself, btw - and after losing to fnatic, they realised their only shot at making the Major was to forfeit their opening games at Bucharest and attend another event instead.

Let’s make one thing clear: this should not be allowed. Ever.

No team should be allowed to forfeit games for that reason. No team should be allowed to just not turn up for the event they accepted an invite to, because they need to try and point farm at another one instead. If they are going to do that, it should come with a VRS price so severe that it prevents them from doing so anyway.

And don’t even get me started on the forfeiting over in China, because I’m likely to say something that will get me sued for libel.

Intercontinental ballistic bullsh-t

Another team who played dirty is Team Liquid, and unfortunately, unlike FaZe, they reaped the rewards of their tactics.

Liquid, with a matter of weeks left before the cut-off, managed to pull off an incredible heist. Signing malbSMd and therefore converting their regional core to the Americas, stealing a Major slot off a team who had been Americas all along in the process.

I won’t criticise them for making the move, because malbs is a genuinely good move for them. Honestly, maybe criticising them at all is unfair, too, because it’s not their fault they were able to pull this bullsh-t. Like always, it’s Valve’s.

Liquid were a team who, let’s face it, were terrible whilst they still had an EU slot. They rarely won games, and their team was visibly a mess as they slumped to loss after loss, sliding down the VRS rankings in near free fall.

Liquid wouldn’t have made it to Cologne if they had remained a part of the European region, and they barely made it as a part of the Americas region. You can’t help but feel for BESTIA, who, after failing to secure visas for the Austin Major, have now been denied a place in Cologne because a team is allowed to change regions right before the cut-off.

Truthfully, I don’t know the solution to this problem. A team should not be confined to their region, sure, but changing so close to the cut-off in order to secure a Major slot? That feels like it shouldn’t be allowed either.

Perhaps regions should have an earlier cut-off date, or maybe changing regions should result in a VRS penalty like FaZe should have received for skipping matches in Bucharest.

Who will watch the watchmen?

Finally, we get to HLTV, the unfortunate people who get the blame for some of the frailties that still exist within the VRS system.

Thanks to Valve’s carelessness, HLTV has been left as the custodians of the VRS system. Their coverage defines which games are deemed worthy of receiving points or not, which has caused multiple issues in the past, where it has been better to lose and play more matches than win and get a better spot in a playoff bracket.

Obviously, that’s not on, but it shouldn’t be down to them to police it.

One thing that this Major race has made abundantly clear, if it wasn’t already clear during the run-in for Budapest, is that the VRS system can not be left to HLTV alone. They have done an exceptional job, but it just shouldn’t be down to them.

Valve needs to step up. They need to collect their own data, and they need to bring in their own team to decide whether all of the things that have gone on in the last month are actually okay or not.

Any logical person would say no, of course, but right now, that logical person doesn’t exist, at least not within a position of power, anyway.

I have a lot of problems with the VRS system, and especially with how it leads to Major qualification, but this one might just be the biggest. None of this should be down to Jesper Larsen, Mischief, HLTV, messioso, or any other VRS perv who crops up in the coming years. It should be down to Valve, and it should have already been in place when VRS came into effect.

Until that happens, I think discontent is always likely to exist, which is a shame, because it’s actually a really good system - we just need Valve to be serious for once.