ESL and BLAST to drop partner leagues due to new Valve requirements

Tournament operators ESL and BLAST have responded to Valve's demand to drop partner leagues starting in 2025. Companies will change the approach to inviting teams to their tournaments as the new rules require.

Senior Vice President of ESL FACEIT Group Ulrich Schulze said via his Twitter account that work on adjusting the organization of flagships tournaments under the auspices of ESL is already underway. In particular, he confirmed that the tournament operator will not only refuse the concept of partner invites, but also expand the model of sharing the revenue from the event among all its participants.

BLAST also confirmed via their social media accounts that they intend to continue supporting the tier 1 scene in Counter-Strike according to Valve's requirements. The ecosystem for 2024 will remain the same, while plans for 2025 will be revised.

Earlier today, on August 3, CS developer company announced a change in the selection system for all the tournaments. Starting from 2025, teams will be able to get to the tournaments in only two ways: according to the Valve ranking system or through open qualifiers. Read more about the innovations in our article via the link.