Valve has finally addressed several issues with its ranking system that the community has been voicing concerns about for some time. Given Valve's usual pace, we're honestly surprised by how quickly these arrived.

First off, forfeits are now treated the same as any other loss, whereas before they weren’t counted as official results, which opened the door for teams to exploit the system.

Facing a tough matchup that could drop your ranking and potentially cost you invites? Easy, just forfeit the game and lose 0 points! That was the case before this fix, but thankfully, Valve is on the case.

Secondly, tournament data will no longer be counted until the entire event is finished, directly addressing the issue GamerLegion brought to light earlier this month. Essentially, GL missed out on invites they would have qualified for because they hadn’t received their prize money and subsequent VRS points before the cutoff. For more details, check out edition #535.

This is one of those loopholes that is so glaringly obvious that it honestly left us wondering how Valve missed it in the first place.

Finally, teams now only need five matches to be ranked, down from the previous 10, while wildcard invites can only be given to teams with at least 3 players who have individually been part of a top 8 roster within the last 6 months, instead of the previous 12.

We had our suspicions before, but now we’re sure - Valve are huge fans of arrozdoce, just like we are! They clearly made this change so that JACKZ can no longer play for NIP, allowing arroz to finally join his squad. How sweet of them.

Oh, just one tiny problem – the Ninjas won’t have many tournaments to play in, since they’re currently ranked #157 in the VRS. The wonders of the “open” circuit.