Valve, developers of popular esports titles Counter Strike and Dota2, have made a short in words but a pretty big announcement regarding the future of Counter Strike and how it will affect the esports scene, starting 2025.

In their latest announcement, the company revealed that future large scale tournaments will have new requirements, details of which are currently being worked on. Valve, however, did provide a short version of what is to come, which is as follows –

i. “Tournament organizers will no longer have unique business relationships with teams that participate in their events”, meaning that starting 2025, franchising will no longer be possible.

ii. Team invitations for tournaments will be based on a new ranking system or open qualifiers that will give all teams an even playing field.

iii. Furthermore, any compensation to participants will be made public and can be inspected by the community.

Fans of the game are delighted, saying the move will give more teams a chance to prove themselves in the open circuits as franchised teams will no longer have a fixed spot for big tournaments.

Valve shared that these steps have been taken to level the playing field and the community is appreciating the move.

Here are some of the reactions of prominent gamers on the announcement –

nice uwu

— ohnePixel (@ohnePixel) August 3, 2023

You have my full attention here.

Happy to see you more hands on!

— Wilton Prado 'zews' (@zews) August 3, 2023

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

— Apeks (@apeksgg) August 3, 2023

Goated

— NRG Chet (@chetsingh) August 3, 2023