Valve has come up with new restrictions for CS:GO coaches at the PGL Stockholm Major that just became public today after the Challengers Stage wrapped up.
The Counter-Strike developer had PGL, the tournament organizer of the Major, instruct the coaches to not touch their players except for during timeouts and to not shout, according to Astralis’ head coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen. If the coaches break these rules, PGL will have to tell them to leave the venue. These rules weren’t heavily enforced over the first few days of the event, but it seems like they were in some matches today, such as during BIG vs. MOUZ, where you can see BIG’s coach Nikola “LEGIJA” Ninić refusing to do a fist bump with Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz.
The topic has taken over social media after the Challengers Stage finished and many coaches, such as zonic, Vitality’s Rémy “XTQZZZ” Quoniam, and Complexity’s Luis “peacemaker” Tadeu, have spoke against it. These rules didn’t exist in previous CS:GO tournaments nor was there ever a debacle around it. Coaches are already restricted in some sense nowadays, though, since they can only talk to their players and share their input during the four timeouts they’re given per map.
Although pros, coaches, and talent members have expressed their concerns with these restrictions, there are also important figures in the community defending the new rules. Esports referee Michal Slowinski and ESL’s managing director of pro gaming Ulrich Schulze argued that they could help maintain the integrity of the game, which was tarnished after the coaching spectator bug in 2020.
The PGL Stockholm Major Legends Stage will start tomorrow and we’ll see then if Valve will keep these restrictions for coaches in effect despite the community backlash.
