If so, then I’ve got the fix. And if not, well look, I’m here to make the Major better. Read it anyway.

Although I’m writing this on the Friday before it kicks off, by the time you’re reading this, the Major will already be underway. Let me predict how the first couple of days have gone:

The first day was about as fun as Stage 1 can be. FaZe have probably lost a BO1, there might be another upset or two, but results have mostly gone the way you’d expect. The 0-2 bracket featured four of the worst teams imaginable, whilst the 2-0 bracket contained some teams you actually don’t think are awful. For the most part you’re already bored of watching what is ultimately a glorified CCT, and any time you say you’re not, the words are followed by “because it’s the Major.”

How many of those did I get right?

If I was a betting man (which I’m not, until some company pays us all at TLDR to be) I’d bet that I had a pretty solid hit rate on those predictions, so whilst we wait for the actually good teams to arrive at what is meant to be the best tournament of the year I’ll ask you this:

Is the Major actually any good?

Seriously, is it? I know it’s great when we get to the main event, but is everything before it actually worth watching? Is it the absolute optimal way of not only finding the best team in the world and also providing an entertaining product that “celebrates” Counter-Strike?

I don’t think it is, and if you’ve read enough of my Deep Dives, you’ll know by now that I think I know how to fix it.

But first, let’s start with the parts that need to stay.

The right stuff

Propa playoffs

The absolute best thing about the Major is the playoffs. There’s no doubt about that.

Well, unless you’re an idiot, like aizyesque.

Anyway, it doesn’t even matter if there’s crap teams in the playoffs, because the fact it’s the Major elevates it to a level where it undeniably matters more than any other time of the year. Even in Rio, or Paris, where the playoff fields ultimately didn’t feel like a representation of the best teams in the world, the playoffs were still a pretty good time.

They were at least no worse than Copenhagen, where the best two things about the playoffs was some d-ckheads running onto the stage to be met with a spear from G2’s Peca, and the magazine created by ourselves.

The best part about the playoffs, though, is that the Major does it the right way. There’s none of this six-team woke nonsense. It’s eight teams. On four days. Not eight teams with a horrible day of four quarter-finals.

Eight teams. Four days. The way it should be.

Of course, there is still the god awful showmatch to contend with, but look, nothing is perfect.

Finally, a real final

A few weeks ago, this section would’ve been going straight into the negative pile. Thankfully, Valve have now fixed that.

As we dive deeper (sorry) into this, well, Deep Dive (sorry again) you’ll begin to understand that I think the Majors are horribly outdated. The finals were the biggest part of that.

In a circuit where every single TO acknowledged BO5 finals as the truth back when CS2 released, Valve took their sweet time to catch up. The Major, for whatever reason, was kept as a BO3 - and we were robbed of some potentially beautiful Counter-Strike as a result of it.

Look at Copenhagen, where NAVI and FaZe traded blowout maps and were ultimately cut short by the stink of BO3. We all know that FaZe had the stronger map pool back then. Would NAVI’s year still have been kicked off by their fluke Major win if they had to win another map? Or would karrigan have managed to wrangle his boys to another trophy?

Now look at Austin. I’m not sure The MongolZ would have managed to win a second map, but let’s not forget that they did actually win map one. Would we have gotten yet another banger BO5 final in 2025 if the Major wasn’t cut short at three maps?

Honestly, Budapest’s final could be terrible. A full on blowout BO5 like when Vitality had their way with MOUZ back at Pro League in March. I’d be incredibly surprised if it was, but I wouldn’t care. The fact that the Major will now feature a BO5 final is enough for me. Besides, if it is a blowout, doesn’t that just further prove how strong the team that actually won it is in that moment? Food for thought.

It’s not even because it puts the Major in line with the rest of the circuit. That helps, sure, but even in MR15 - BO5s are the way you truly find a worthy victor.

BO5s demand composure, resilience. They ensure that one team has a genuinely stronger map pool than the other, regardless of the result. When someone wins a BO5, there’s never a question as to whether their win was legit or not.

To RMR or not to RMR

Before we get into the bad stuff, let’s talk about something I both like and don’t like: The RMRs. I love them. I hate them. I miss them. I’m glad that they’re gone.

The fact is, the RMRs were not perfect. But in entirely removing them, neither is the VRS system.

First off, the fact that the best teams across a season are now guaranteed to be at the Major is a good thing. As funny as it was to see G2 fall against GamerLegion in the run up to Rio, it’s ridiculous to suggest that the Major was better because that happened.

My good friend aizyesque likes to say that the VRS “insulates” the top teams. I’d argue that it actually insulates the tournament itself. I’d also argue that he has a conceptual misunderstanding of what the Major actually is. The Major is no longer just one tournament in a random point on the calendar that is attributed the status of “Major”, it’s the culmination of a season of hard work, a final opportunity for a team to crown themselves as the best of the best. Personally, I think that’s a good thing.

The way the Major is set up now is probably, and somewhat sadly, a good thing for the game. Although it was a moment I think will serve as a false advertisement for this system, fnatic qualifying in the way they did and everything surrounding that qualification made that Fragadelphia special. Also, despite teams like Endpoint bidding farewell to their CS team because of this system, other orgs, like OG, have recommitted to it because of the greater sense of stability.

There is, however, a limit to how good all of these things are.

In some senses, aizyesque was right, we killed the magic. Stories like fnatic are great, teams like PARIVISION and NIP rising through the rankings to make the Major is also great, but there’s always going to be validity to the complaint that teams like ITB, Passion UA, and BNE, would not have been able to capture hearts within this system.

That’s a damn shame. Teams should still have the chance to qualify for the Major in the ways they always used to. That was the intention of VRS, to open the circuit back up. Not to create a system where those who can afford to pay to go to LANs are the only ones who really have a chance of climbing.

There is a problem, though. The RMRs are a bit of a b-tch to run. They’re awkward to schedule, and almost impossible to monetise. That’s not exactly fantastic for whichever TO is putting on the Major.

That said, Austin almost had it perfect. At least in terms of the teams that were in the RMRs. The top teams got their invites, and the teams with a reasonable chance to do so got their opportunity thanks to some lovely Swiss action.

It should have been great, but it wasn’t. It was ruined by the fact it was online, by the presence of BO1s, and by the utter disrespect towards coaches that saw them relegated to their local Starbucks instead of being impactful alongside their teams. A couple of those things are nothing new for Valve, but it really puts the legitimacy of the entire event into doubt. Especially when a genuinely decent team like GamerLegion crashed out.

The bad stuff

Why are we still watching BO1s?

Earlier, I spoke about the Major being outdated. BO1s are the reason why.

There is absolutely - and I can not stress this enough - absolutely zero place for BO1s in CS2. There was barely even a place for them in CS:GO, but that switch to MR12 makes their existence reprehensible.

Where else in the tier one calendar do you see BO1s? ESL? No. BLAST? Not since the death of Pro Series. Even PGL understands that BO1s are rubbish and they don’t understand the importance of hiring an audio guy.

BO1s shouldn’t be at the Major; they make the competition a whole lot worse. It’s simply just too hard to tell if they’re actually legitimate or not. Would Falcons have crashed out in Austin if they hadn’t lost BO1s to - checks notes - B8 and Lynn Vision? How much longer would Vitality’s winning streak gone on for if they hadn’t lost a BO1 to Legacy?

The best part is that we already know that BO3 Swiss is possible. PGL have been doing it all year, and it only adds an extra day onto their Swiss stages. With that said, there really is no excuse for not doing it.

The dilution of the Major

Now we’re onto the thing that made me write this article. Stage 1. God I hate Stage 1.

Stage 1, just like with when they removed Minors to create the Challenger Stage, is a way to generate more money for Valve. But guess what? Like many other things, I just don’t care. I don’t care how much money Valve makes from Majors. They already make an incredible amount of money from cases every single month.

However, because Valve aren’t satisfied with that, we have to watch Stage 1. The existence of which makes the Major too long, brings in too many teams that aren’t actually that interesting, who play crap CS, and takes away from the overall enjoyment of the Major as a full package.

Even me, someone who has to watch Counter-Strike in order to make money, I just can’t do it. I can’t watch all of Stage 1. If I do, I’ll just be burnt out by the time the good teams enter the competition. Even if burn out wasn’t a thing, who is really interested in watching Rare Atom vs Red Canids in a 0-2 game? That’s not what the Majors are for.

We could maybe whack them all in one 32-team Swiss Stage, or crack out some four team groups like in the FIFA World Cup, but maybe that’s a conversation for another day.

Make Majors great again

So, how do we make the Major great?

Well, obviously, I’m going to say that Stage 1 should go. Of course it should. It’s rubbish. Barely even a quarter of the teams in it have a reasonable chance of making it past Stage 2.

But if it does need to exist, why not make them qualify the old fashioned way? Why not bring back RMRs, or Minors, and make these teams fight for the chance to be there alongside other potentially worthy teams? They don’t get prize money for Stage 1, so why even guarantee them the sticker money?

The next obvious change is to make it entirely BO3. You already know why.

But the final point is the big one: giving the Major more prestige.

The playoff trophies are wicked and great for the players who get them, but there are so many ways that we can make the Major feel like it matters more and elevate it back above the likes of Cologne and Katowice/Krakow.

The first would be to copy VALORANT. Yeah, I know. Hear me out. In VALORANT, the VCT teams are given a Classic (Glock, for all us sane people) skin that people can buy, with some of the money going towards the team that skin represents. We already have that with stickers, but what if we added in team skins as well, and used some of the proceeds from that to fund the prize pool? In doing so, we could massively increase what is now a relatively average prize pool within tier one.

I think the Major prize pool should be massive. Maybe not TI levels, but far bigger than any other tournament on the calendar. It should be life changing for every player who wins it, and I don’t understand why it isn’t. Making it so would set the Major apart, create even more conversations around it. It’s needed.

Until these changes are made, I don’t see why we should all care about the Major for any reason other than “It’s just the Major.”

So ask yourself this: is that really good enough?