MESA Nomadic Masters Fall loses ranked status due to VRS rules violation

Valve has stripped MESA Nomadic Masters Fall of its ranked status due to a violation of one of the official Counter-Strike 2 tournament operation requirements. The rule in question is the one that governs open qualifiers:

For Open Qualifiers, Tournament Operator can use any criteria that in good faith are reasonable and transparent, and do not specifically target individual Rosters. Acceptable criteria include demographics and region (e.g. "Female Rosters based in Canada").

The LAN event in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia was originally scheduled for October 15-19, but recent documents have revealed that the organizer was attempting to reschedule the competition for September 23-28, ahead of the October 6 deadline for StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 invites. The new dates and format would have seen all eight teams in the Main Stage qualifying from a 32-team LAN event billed as an "open qualifier".

According to HLTV.org, MESA Nomadic Masters Fall planned to charge each squad a non-refundable $10,000 registration fee to participate in the open qualifier. Valve confirmed that "some teams had advance access to the sign-up process for a first-come-first-served open event, which violates 3.5 of the TOR".

Origin: www.hltv.org