Valve has significantly altered its Regional Standings system, mainly by changing the invitation system and introducing Wildcard teams, following a joint letter from top CS2 organizations worldwide.
VRS teams will now be ranked in order and receive invitations/qualifications per their rankings. A directly invited VRS squad cannot start later than another directly invited VRS roster with a higher VRS rating since teams invited by VRS will also need to start at the tournament stage based on their VRS ranking.
Closed qualifiers are no longer a part of the tournament qualification stages as multi-stage tournaments will be using the VRS Priorities and the previously mentioned revised definition of Main Stage.
Wildcard invites will be limited to two eligible rosters invites to a tournament as Wildcards for every eight rosters invited from a VRS:
- It includes at least 3 players who individually were members of a top 8 Roster on an Invite VRS List at any time during the preceding 6 months.
- It has placed first or second place in any Tournament, of equal or lesser tier than the one issuing the invite, during the preceding 6 months.
There are now subregions for the VRS listings in Asia and America. Oceania, East Asia, and West Asia are on the one side, and North America and South America are on the other. Being implemented before the Major, we are yet to see how fairly the new system treats the lower-ranked teams.
