Valve gets rid of the infamous "Stewie2K loophole" that Wildcard used for the Austin Major

Valve has clarified the rules about teams' regional assignment in the latest update of the Major supplemental rulebook, effectively ending the "Stewie2K loophole" once and for all, as noted first by Complexity's manager Graham "messioso" Pitt.

Here is what's written in the Major supplemental rulebook after Valve updated it three days ago:

If a team is invited to participate in a stage of the event based on their Regional Standing, at least three out of the five members of the core roster (the five players indicated in the Regional Standing) must accept the invitation and the resulting roster must satisfy the invitation's Regional Assignment, otherwise the invitation will be extended to the next-highest ranked roster in the region.

A team's Regional Assignment is the region represented by the majority of its players. In the case of a tie, their Regional Assignment is the region with greater representation in the Major (i.e., Europe, then Americas, then Asia).

Before this change, Wildcard famously used Jake "Stewie2K" Yip as a stand-in for the PGL Astana 2025 Closed Qualifier, replacing the Swedish AWPer Love "phzy" Smidebrant.

That maneuver made Wildcard be considered an NA team ahead of the BLAST.tv Austin Major invites, and the organization didn't risk ending up in the Europe Major Regional Qualifier (MRQ).

This wasn't the only significant change Valve made this week, as the developer most notably canceled all MRQs for the StarLadder Budapest Major and onwards.