Valve tweaks Major qualification to encourage winning during the New Legend stage

Valve CS:GO Majors are going to be slightly different after the FACEIT London Major.

The bottom two teams who are eliminated in the New Legend stage at FACEIT London with 0-3 records will not be given invites to the following Major, IEM Katowice, in February 2019. In a blog post titled, “Winning is Everything,” Valve declared that those teams with 0-3 records will have to qualify for the Major through the regional Minor championships.

“Two teams will make an early exit from the Major Championship circuit,” Valve said in the blog post. “To replace them, two additional teams will qualify from the regional Minors: the third-place teams from each region will take part in a brief playoff, with the top two advancing to the main event.”

For example, North and Virtus Pro went 0-3 in the New Legend stage of the ELEAGUE Boston Major last January. So if this system were in place during the last Major, they wouldn’t be considered New Challengers at the upcoming FACEIT Major. There would be six New Challenger teams, 10 Minor Champions, and the usual eight Current Legends in the Major system.

This really means that two regional Minor championships will have a third qualifying team for the IEM Katowice Major. It’s not clear which two regions will be selected amongst the Americas, the CIS region, Europe, and Asia/Australia.

The FACEIT London Major begins on Sep. 5, starting with the New Challenger stage, where 16 teams will fight for eight spots in the New Legend stage.