Valve strips Mongolian LAN of VRS

MESA Nomadic Masters Fall, a Mongolian LAN set to take place in October, has lost its VRS status and become an unranked event. This happened because MESA Nomadic Masters Fall violated section 3.5 of the Tournament Operation Requirements, according to Valve.

Section 3.5 of the Tournament Operation Requirements covers Open Qualifiers.

For Open Qualifiers, Tournament Operator can use any criteria that in good faith are reasonable and transparent, and do not specifically target individual Rosters. Acceptable criteria include demographics and region (e.g. "Female Rosters based in Canada").

MESA Nomadic Masters Fall was set to run from October 15th to 19th, however, MESA was trying to change the dates to September 23rd to 28th. This would mean that the tournament would be played ahead of the October 6 ranking cutoff for StarLadder Budapest Major invites.

The tournament would see 32 teams start in an "open qualifier", with the top eight moving to the main event.

Several teams, including Complexity, revealed on socials that a tournament organizer was trying to charge $10,000 for a registration fee for the open qualifier.

Our parental website HLTV understands that this tournament organizer was MESA. And, Valve noticed what was going on.

"Some teams had advance access to the sign-up process for a first-come-first-served open event, which violates 3.5 of the TOR," Valve said in a comment to HLTV.

On top of all this, MESA had already reduced the prizepool of Nomadic Masters Fall from $250,000 to $100,000, and was accused of not paying talent.

After messioso posted the screenshot of the $10,000 fee for an Open Qualifier, Australian caster Jordan "⁠Elfishguy⁠" Mays called the tournament organizer out for charging this fee while "ghosting their unpaid talent."

MESA issues a statement

After HLTV published the news on August 19th, MESA released a statement on its X account, taking full responsibility for what happened. You can read MESA's statement in full below:

While no teams had been registered at the time of the decision, we recognize that our early communication with several interested teams-prior to the public announcement of updated tournament dates-constituted a procedural violation.

In response to direct inquiries from teams seeking clarity on scheduling and logistics, we shared updated tournament details before they were publicly announced. But we now understand that it unintentionally compromised the fairness and accessibility required for ranked events.

We take full responsibility for this oversight. MESA is actively revising the structure and timeline of Nomadic Masters Fall 2025 to ensure full compliance with Valve's Tournament Operation Requirements. Our commitment to integrity, transparency, and international best practices remains unchanged.