Valve institutes new forfeit rule for teams that don't field invited roster core
Valve has recently instituted a couple of changes to its CS2 tournament operations rulebook, requiring teams to field at least three players from the lineup that was invited to the tournament.
The newest rule, Rule 3.10.1 under the Ranked Tournaments section, was added at the beginning of this week, and reads: "Tournament Operator will declare a forfeit in any match in which a roster does not field at least three of the Invited Roster Athletes for the entirety of the match."
Valve also officially changed Rule 3.2.5, which ays that directly invited VRS rosters may only accept a Ranked tournament invitation if three players from the invited roster are on the participating roster. Now the rule also notes that at least three of the invited players "will play in each event match."
As noted by HLTV at the beginning of the week, this forced the likes of Virtus.pro to call AWPer Kaisar "ICY" Faiznurov back into action for CAC 2025, though the organization long-term intends to utilize VP.Prodigy player Vladimir "b1st" Krasikov. Because VP has already replaced two players that were invited to CAC in July in Denis "electroNic" Sharipov and Timur "FL4MUS" Maryev, they had to call back ICY to avoid a forfeit.
This official clarification to the rulebook was made in the wake of the situation with FaZe and Håvard "rain" Nygaard, which led to a forfeit loss to G2 before rain stepped in for the rest of the event.
