The goal of the Major is to bring together the best Counter-Strike players in the world to a LAN setting, provide them an opportunity to claim their title, and to demonstrate to millions of CS players around the world just how high the Counter-Strike skill ceiling is.

The Major represents the pinnacle of Counter-Strike skill and provides an open invitation for the best in the world to participate regardless of their means or access.

Historically, the rules and requirements for Majors have been communicated publicly through different channels or to partners privately. By consolidating them into a single document, we hope to eliminate inconsistencies across Valve-sponsored events and allow tournament operators to prepare their staff well in advance of their events.

This document does not contain all of the rules of the tournament; only the ones we require to be uniform across all Major events. For the complete body of tournament rules for your event, contact the tournament organizer.

If you would like to contact the CS team with questions or comments, feel free to send an email to csgoteamfeedback [at] valvesoftware.com, with the subject #MajorsRule.

What is expected of tournament organizers with respect to this document.

The Tournament Organizer ("TO") will include this document in its tournament rules. Event admins are expected to be familiar with the contents. Any conflict between these and other tournament rules are to be resolved prior to the publication of the event rules.

These are the main deliverables outlined in this document that are required of the TO, along with their due date (relative to the start of the event).

Rules and procedures for determining who is to participate in the events.

Major invites are sent to the core lineup (not including a substitute) who earned an invitation from the most recent RMR.

A team cannot adjust their core lineup between the RMR and the Major. However, they can register a different coach or substitute player.

The Major features 24 teams

• 16 teams are invited to enter the Major in the Opening stage.
• 8 teams receive Opening Stage byes and are invited directly to the Elimination stage.

RMR invites are sent to teams of three or more members of the core lineup who participated in the Elimination Stage of the previous Major.

Separating world-wide competition into regions that allow players to compete with low latency is important to measure skill on a level playing field.

Regional Major Ranking events (RMRs) sort teams within their region, and the top teams from each region receive Major invitations.

RMR regions roughly correspond to their geographic equivalent. On the edges, countries should be assigned to the region that provides teams the lowest latency in qualifiers.

The 3 RMR regions are

• Europe
• America
• Asia

In the event that the RMRs must be held online, there will be 5 RMR regions

• Europe
• North America
• South America
• Asia
• Oceania

A team’s region is determined by the citizenship of the majority of its players. In case of a tie, the team chooses between the two. In the case of players that don't belong to one of the 3 regions (Europe, Asia, Americas), those players can assign themselves to a region already represented on the roster. If all players are from another region, then they can choose any region.

The number of teams invited from each region depends on the performance of that region in the preceding Major. Opening and Elimination Stage invitations are allocated according to the number of teams from the region that earned their respective position in the Major:

• One Opening stage invitation is assigned to the region for every team of that region that reached the Elimination stage of the previous Major.
• One Elimination stage invitation is assigned to the region for every team of that region that reached the Playoff stage of the previous Major.

Teams that earn an invitation for their region (i.e., top 16 teams from the Major) are given a chance to defend their regional invitation at the following RMR. If a team is able to--and opts to--play in a different region, their previous region loses an invitation and their new region gains an invitation. In other words, teams that change regions take their invites with them.

Additionally, 8 Opening stage invitations are distributed to regions.

Note that for the purposes of RMR, regions represented by more than 8 teams will be subdivided into groups of 8 or less, so that each group can be resolved with one of the available RMR formats.

Invitations will be sent to intact teams, per the invitation requirements above.

If a team declines an invitation, or is no longer intact, the next-highest ranked team receives their invitation. If there are no additional teams available, then the remaining slots are to be determined by a last-chance regional qualifier.

• Team roster must include 5 players ("Core Lineup").
• Team roster may optionally include 1 coach.
• Team roster may optionally include 1 substitute player.
• The coach and substitute may be the same person.

The TO needs to collect the following of all registered participants and deliver them to Valve (Excel or CSV).

• Team
• Position (player, sub, or coach)
• Full name
• Nickname
• Date of birth
• Country of citizenship
• Email
• SteamID
• Steam Workshop autograph item link

The TO must inform participants that this information will be transferred to Valve.

New players' nicknames are to be registered and represented as they are commonly known in third party esports media (e.g., hltv and liquipedia). Players that have previously registered for a Major event and are using the same Steam account are to use their previously registered nicknames.

Team names and logos are to be registered and represented as they are commonly seen in their own media and in third party esports media.

If there are multiple teams whose commonly known names share the same title sponsors, only one of them may use the title sponsor at the event.

Players and teams are required to accept the following agreement (verbatim) in order to participate in the event. The TO will distribute (physically or digitally) and collect signatures or equivalent from all registered participants and team representatives and deliver them to Valve. The acceptance must be legally binding (e.g., valid signatures).

1. Rights Release

1.1 (a) “CS” means Counter-Strike, and future versions thereof. (b) “Likeness” means my appearance, performance, name, biographical information, and statements, and any audio or video depiction produced by me (i) during the CS event, or (ii) provided by me or my team to Valve Corporation (“Valve”) or the event operator. With respect to a team, Likeness also includes team trademarks, logos, or other team intellectual property that the team may decide to provide Valve or the event operator outside of the CS Workshop.

1.2 I agree that Valve may use, distribute, and display my Likeness (a) in CS, or (b) in media relating to CS or to a CS event that Valve licenses or sponsors. I agree that Valve will retain these rights for so long as I continue to participate in CS events. I also agree Valve may retain these rights to use, distribute and display my Likeness related to historical CS events forever. 

1.3 I agree that Valve has no obligation to submit to me any material using my Likeness for any further approval and that Valve may edit my Likeness as Valve deems reasonable for the uses permitted by paragraph 1.2. However, Valve is not obligated to make any use of any of the rights set forth in this agreement.

1.4 To the extent Valve and I separately agree to terms governing my Likeness depicted in a submission to the CS Workshop, the agreement(s) regarding the Workshop will apply to the Workshop submission instead of this agreement.  

1.5 I warrant and represent that this release does not in any way conflict with any existing commitment on my part. Each team also warrants and represents that its players may make this without any conflict with any existing commitment on to the team or by the team.  

1.6 I agree that my promises are intended to have lasting effect as described in paragraph 1.2. The promises in this agreement will bind and benefit any heirs, successors and assigns of me or Valve.

2. Conflicts of Interest

2.1 Teams and players should not have any financial interest in the success of any team that they are competing against. To participate in this Tournament, players and teams are required to affirm that they have no conflict of interest (including any business entanglement such as shared management, shared ownership of entities, licensing, and loans) with any other participating team or its players. 

2.2 I am not currently aware of any conflict of interest that I might have with another participating team or any player on another participating team. If I currently have a conflict of interest or become aware of one over the course of the event, I will immediately provide detail to the CS development team explaining the nature of my relationship with the other party, and a plan for resolving the issue in the future. 

The TO is to collect any Disclosures of Conflicts of Interest that result from registration and make them publicly available.

The TO needs to provide Valve with player avatar images for all participating players.

• Images are to be head shots with a dark background; 512x512 PNGs.
• Images are to be named as the player's Steam ID (e.g., 12345678901234567.png)

The TO will not qualify, nor allow in any qualifying event, any player who has been "Valve Anti-Cheat" banned ("VAC Banned") in CS. Any player who is VAC Banned on any of their accounts must be approved in writing by Valve in order to be eligible to participate in the event. Any team on which a banned player has played during the period starting with the first qualifier and ending with the end of the event, will be banned ("Banned Team"). Valve also reserves the right to disqualify any player, team, broadcaster, commentator, or producer in its sole discretion. The TO will immediately disqualify such person or team upon notice from Valve. Any event winnings by such player or such Banned Team will be forfeit. No player from a Banned Team will be eligible to compete in the event with any other team.

Individuals (including coaches) that are prohibited from participation in the event are not to be employed or partnered with the TO for the event (including streaming partners). Nor are they to have access to team/staff-only areas.

Rules, procedures, and definitions that pertain to the format and structure of the competition.

1. Opening Stage
   • Swiss bracket
   • 16 Teams
2. Elimination Stage
   • Swiss bracket
   • 16 Teams
3. Playoffs Stage
   • Single elimination bracket
   • Top 8 from the Elimination Stage

The RMR format for a region is determined by the number of slots for that region. All teams not directly invited due to RMR position are to qualify in through closed qualifiers. The formats are as follows:

• 1-4 invites: 8-team double-elimination bracket

  Best of 3: Decider matches.

• 5 to 8 invites: 16 team Swiss bracket

  Best of 3: Decider matches (e.g., matches where a team reaches their third win or third loss).

  At times, it will be necessary to determine Opening or Elimination Stage invitations among a group of teams with identical records. In that case the following process should be used to separate them:

    1 team: one of the two 3-0 teams.
    - The two 3-0 teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated.
  
    2 teams: both 3-0 teams.
    
    3 teams: both 3-0 teams and one of the three 3-1 teams.
    - The three 3-1 teams are first sorted by difficulty score. 
    - The lower two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated. 
    - The remaining two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated.
  
    4 teams: both 3-0 teams and two of the three 3-1 teams.
    - The three 3-1 teams are first sorted by difficulty score. 
    - The lower two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated. 	
    
    5 teams: both 3-0 teams and all three 3-1 teams.
    
    6 teams: both 3-0 teams, all three 3-1 teams, and one of the three 3-2 team. 
    - The three 3-2 teams are first sorted by difficulty score. 
    - The lower two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated. 
    - The remaining two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated.
  
    7 teams: both 3-0 teams, all three 3-1 teams, and two of the three 3-2 teams.
    - The three 3-2 teams are first sorted by difficulty score. 
    - The lower two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated. 
  
    8 teams: both 3-0, all three 3-1, and all three 3-2 teams.
  

• 9 to 16 invites: subdivide teams by Final Ranking, placing teams into two groups. The resulting groups are to use the format appropriate for that number of invites, per the above.

• 17 to 21 invites: subdivide teams by Final Ranking, placing teams into two groups. The groups each play a 16 team Swiss bracket with 8 teams advancing. Teams with a 2-3 record play in a last-chance single-elimination Bo3 bracket, with teams from group 1 playing initial matchups against teams from group 2 following the Swiss matchup rules. After initial matchups, the subsequent format depends on the number of invites:

    17 teams:
    - The three remaining 3-3 teams are first sorted by difficulty score. 
    - The lower two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated. 
    - The remaining two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated.
  
    18 teams:
    - The three remaining 3-3 teams are first sorted by difficulty score. 
    - The lower two teams play a best of 3 and the loser is eliminated. 	
    
    19 teams: all three remaining 3-3 teams.
  
    20 teams:
    - The three 3-3 teams advance.
    - The three remaining 2-4 teams are first sorted by difficulty score.
    - The upper two teams play a best of 3 and the winner advances.
  
    21 teams:
    - The three 3-3 teams advance.
    - The three remaining 2-4 teams are first sorted by difficulty score.
    - The upper two teams play a best of 3 and the winner advances.
    - The remaining two teams play a best of 3 and the winner advances.
  

In order to ensure that the resulting groups are as similar in strength as possible, the highest and lowest ranked invitation slots are paired and placed into a group, and this process continues for each subsequent group.

E.g., given 16 EUR regional slots, pair slots according to the rule above and split into two groups:

The resulting groups are:

All Invited and Qualified Teams are first sorted by Regional Standing, and then assigned to their corresponding RMR (e.g., the highest-ranked EUR team is assigned to slot 1 in the EUR 1 RMR). Within each RMR, the highest-ranked teams are paired with the lowest-ranked teams.

E.g., With two 16-team RMRs, the EUR regional teams would be assigned as follows:

• Teams play against opponents of identical W-L record.
• Three wins advance---Three losses eliminate
• All elimination and advancement matches are to be best of three.
• All other matches are to be best of one.
• Teams are not to play the same opponent twice in the same stage, if possible.
• Matchups shall be determined by seed. The first round follows the Initial Matchups. In round 2 and 3, the highest seeded team faces the lowest seeded team available that does not result in a rematch within the stage. In other rounds, refer to the following table and select the top-most row that does not result in a rematch:

Matchups for the first round of the Swiss format are as follows:

• Opening Matches
  • 1 vs. 8
  • 2 vs. 7
  • 3 vs. 6
  • 4 vs. 5
• Grand Final
  • Best of Three
  • Upper bracket team chooses whether to act first in the map veto.

• Bracket A:
  • 1 vs. 8
  • 4 vs. 5
• Bracket B:
  • 2 vs. 7
  • 3 vs. 6
• All matches are best of three

All Major and RMR events are to use the following map pick-ban process for determining which map (bo1) or maps (bo3) are played.

1. The higher seed team chooses to be Team A or Team B
2. Team A removes 2 maps
3. Team B removes 3 maps
4. Team A removes 1 map
5. Team B chooses starting side

1. The higher seed team chooses to be Team A or Team B
2. Team A removes 1 map
3. Team B removes 1 map
4. Team A picks the map 1
5. Team B chooses starting side on map 1
6. Team B picks map 2
7. Team A chooses starting side on map 2
8. Team B removes one map
9. Team A removes one map
10. Team B chooses starting side on map 3

All teams not invited to an RMR due to their position from the prior Major (i.e., the top 16 teams at that event) will qualify via closed qualifier. The closed qualifier requirements are as follows:

• Each region will hold one closed qualifier
  • The closed qualifier may be held online.
  • If a region must be subdivided to accommodate ping of participating teams (e.g., AMER -> NA and SA), RMR invitations will be split evenly among the regions. If invitations cannot be evenly split, the remaining invitation(s) will be granted to the subdivided qualifier featuring the team with the highest Regional Standing.
• The closed qualifier format will follow the RMR format for the corresponding number of teams.
• Half of the teams in the closed qualifier will be invited directly based on their Regional Standing. The other half are to qualify through open qualifiers.

Teams in each Major Region are sorted via an official Regional Standing.

Coming into the event, all 24 teams are sorted based on their current Regional Standing, and assigned to a slot corresponding to the Next Major Slot.

• Opening Stage:

  • All teams will use their pre-event seed.

• Elimination Stage:

  • The top 8 teams will use their pre-event seed.
  • The bottom 8 teams will use their final seed from the Opening stage (see Mid-stage Seed Calculation).

• Playoff Stage:

  • All teams will use their final seed from the Elimination stage (see Mid-stage Seed Calculation).

For all Swiss matchups (e.g., the Opening and Elimination stage, and Swiss RMR formats), after the initial matches, seed is determined (in order) by:

1. Current W-L record in the stage
2. Difficulty Score in the current stage
3. Initial seeding of the current stage

Each team's Difficulty Score is tracked for the purpose of tie-breaking.

The Difficulty Score is the sum of current wins minus the sum of current losses for every opponent a team has faced.

Team A's prior opponents are 2-0 and 1-1. Team A's Difficulty Score is 2 (prior opponents have 3 wins total, and 1 loss total, so 3-1 = 2)

Team B's prior opponents are both 1-1. Their Difficulty Score is 0 (prior opponents have 2 wins and 2 losses in total, so 2-2 = 0)

Therefore, if both Team A and B have the same win-loss record, Team A gets the higher seed because it played against teams that were more difficult to defeat.

Requirements that pertain to the technical setup, configuration, and execution of the RMRs and Majors.

The TO is to use the up-to-date in-game versions of the maps in the Active Duty Map Group.

Players can have workshop maps on their competition machines provided that

1. The workshop map was downloaded directly from the workshop by an event admin.
2. The workshop map has a minimum of 100k (one hundred thousand) subscribers.
3. The game is restarted in the presence of an admin before the competition match begin.

• Game art and sound are not to be modified on player or observer clients.
• Augmented reality (AR) elements are not to be designed to pretend to be a part of the game world.
• Augmented reality (AR) elements are to only ever present useful information (e.g. player statistics).
• Any sponsorship in AR attached to the above needs written approval by Valve.
• Players' access to their inventory should not be modified or augmented.

Competition PCs are to have no internet access aside from what is minimally required to log in to Steam and CS and run the game.

• Block access to everything and allow only UDP traffic to AS32590 blocks (http://bgp.he.net/AS32590#_prefixes) to avoid any content hosted on 3rd party sites from getting onto the tournament machines. Blocking all non-UDP traffic, primarily TCP access, even to our AS32590 blocks is also required, because our IP ranges still deliver game content, and malicious participants can have game content masquerading as different appid on Steam Greenlight, Early Access, or the Workshop.

• Have the tournament LAN ports 27015-27050 open for TCP and UDP to Valve network AS. This will just allow WebSocket connections to be used for logon traffic.

• Ideal implementation will be proactively dropping non-UDP connections with TCP resets or similar low-level packets sent to initiating clients, which should hopefully help the client timeouts to be reasonable (as opposed to blackholing outgoing traffic and forcing the client to be stuck waiting for prolonged periods of time).

• Set the player machines to use local host (127.0.0.1) for DNS, otherwise players will experience stalls while trying to reach an external DNS due to the network restrictions.

Competition PCs are to be secured and managed by event staff and restricted down to what is minimally required to log in and run the game.

• Provide each player a unique SSD that remains in the possession of the TO and only used by players while supervised.
• The SSD image must be created using a Steam account with access to all game depots including Chinese audio localization files by Perfect World and other Perfect World assets that are required for players using their Steam accounts linked to Perfect World accounts.
  • Let us know the Steam account you will be using to author the SSD images and we will add correct licenses to your Steam account so that you could download all the required assets. Without the correct licenses some players will be unable to launch the game because network restrictions will be blocking downloads of missing assets.
• Create non-admin Windows account for players and do not distribute admin credentials or access.
• Set the entire Steam folder to Read-Only access with the exception of the \Steam\logs\ folder which will need write access to update the log files.
• Create a directory “C:\configs” on each machine and define a system global environment variable USRLOCALCSGO with the value of that directory “C:\configs” (or if each player has their own Windows account that environment variable can have path pointing at player’s roaming profile subdirectory). Players can copy their config.cfg into C:\configs and the game will load and save configs there so you won’t need administrator rights for players to change configs, and Steam CS install can remain read-only.
• Collect a list of required peripheral drivers from players and download them directly from the manufacturer.
• USB mass storage devices and similar devices should be disabled using the following instructions:
  • Start > Run > gpedit.msc
  • Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Removable Storage Access
  • Enable the deny rules for all of the entries except for Custom Classes.
• Setup disk auditing so you can see all changes made to the disk by the player
• Setup AppLocker
  1. Application Identity Service (AppIDSvc) must be started for AppLocker to work properly. Recommend setting it to automatic.
  2. Go to Applocker and create default rules then delete the allow program files rule.
  3. Set allow rules for the following (can be set for the everyone group or the Windows user players will be using):
     • Steam.exe
     • csgo.exe
     • any other applications players will need access to such as VOIP (note that these applications may be blocked from making config file changes on the limited Windows user account so prepare the configs ahead of time from the admin account)
  4. Set Deny rules for the following (can be set for the everyone group or the Windows user players will be using):
     • powershell.exe
     • cmd.exe
     • cscript.exe
• In the BIOS set a password then enable Secure Boot, set boot to UEFI only, remove all boot devices other than the OS drive (specifically make sure USB boot is not an option), and enable VT-d if the hardware supports it.

Setting up auditing rules should be done on player machines so if a player is called into question there are records of actions taken on the machine. It should be noted that on some hardware this could potentially cause performance issues so once auditing rules have been set the machines should be tested and benchmarked to ensure that the game will still run smoothly.

• Enter the following commands into an elevated command prompt:

  • auditpol /set /user:proplayer /category:* /success:enable
  • auditpol /set /user:proplayer /category:* /failure:enable

  NOTE: Make sure the /user:proplayer is changed to reflect the account name the players will be using.

  • The clock on player machines should also be set to synchronize with an internet time server to ensure the time stamp on the events is accurate.

Clients should have the following convars set as such:

cl_invites_only_mainmenu 1
cl_invites_only_friends 1

• Server may run eBot.
• For any other server mod, the TO will obtain approval in writing from Valve.

• Confirm that server is recording demos. Demos are to be delivered to Valve.

All server convars are to be set to Premier defaults (by first loading cfg/gamemode_competitive.cfg and then loading cfg/gamemode_competitive_tmm.cfg) except for the following exceptions.

• The following convars are to be set as such:

tv_enable                                              1
tv_enable1                                             1
tv_dispatchmode                                        0
sv_maxusrcmdprocessticks                               3    
sv_max_dropped_packets_to_process                      3
                   
tv_broadcast                                           1
tv_allow_autorecording_index                           0
                   
sv_steamauth_enforce                                   1
mp_autokick                                            0
sv_matchend_drops_enabled                              0
sv_damage_print_enable                                 0
                   
sv_reliableavatardata                                  2
sv_invites_only_mainmenu                               1
                   
mp_spectators_max                                      10
sv_matchpause_auto_5v5                                 1
sv_clockcorrection_msecs                               0
mp_overtime_limit                                      0
mp_warmup_pausetimer                                   1
mp_warmuptime                                          60
mp_halftime_pausematch                                 1
mp_competitive_endofmatch_extra_time                   155
               
mp_warmuptime_all_players_connected                    0
               
sv_spec_hear                                           4
tv_relayradio                                          0
sv_vote_allow_spectators                               1
sv_vote_issue_loadbackup_spec_only                     1
sv_vote_issue_loadbackup_spec_authoritative            1
sv_vote_issue_pause_match_spec_only                    1
sv_vote_creation_timer                                 25
sv_vote_failure_timer                                  25
           
sv_occlude_players                                     0
sv_force_transmit_players                              1
sv_force_transmit_ents                                 1
                   
sv_holiday_mode                                        0
           
cash_team_bonus_shorthanded                            0
game_mode                                              1
game_type                                              0
log                                                    on
mp_logdetail                                           3
mp_logdetail_items                                     1
mp_logmoney                                            2
sv_gameinstructor_disable                              1
sv_invites_only_mainmenu                               1
           
tv_allow_camera_man_steamid                            <STEAM_ID_OF_OBSERVER>

• The following convars can have any value:

mp_disconnect_kills_players
mp_do_warmup_period
mp_halftime_pausetimer
mp_overtime_halftime_pausetimer
mp_win_panel_display_time
occlusion_test_async
spec_replay_enable
sv_allow_votes
sv_allow_wait_command
sv_dc_friends_reqd
sv_forcepreload
sv_hibernate_postgame_delay
sv_hibernate_when_empty
sv_kick_ban_duration
sv_kick_players_with_cooldown
sv_lan
sv_load_forced_client_names_file
sv_max_queries_sec
sv_maxcmdrate
sv_maxrate
sv_maxuptimelimit
sv_memlimit
sv_mincmdrate
sv_minrate
sv_pausable
sv_pure_kick_clients
sv_pure_trace
sv_server_graphic1
sv_server_graphic2
sv_steamgroup
sv_steamgroup_exclusive
sv_voiceenable
sv_vote_quorum_ratio
sv_vote_timer_duration
tv_advertise_watchable
tv_allow_static_shots
tv_autorecord
tv_broadcast_origin_auth 
tv_broadcast_url
tv_chatgroupsize
tv_chattimelimit
tv_debug
tv_delay
tv_delay1
tv_delaymapchange
tv_deltacache
tv_maxclients
tv_maxrate
tv_name
tv_overridemaster
tv_relay_whitelist_cidr
tv_timeout
tv_title
tv_transmitall

Servers must be configured to submit logs in order for the match results to present in the client to all users.

1. Provide Valve the Steam ID of the account ("Admin") that will be setting and submitting the match logs in order to enable the Control Room.
2. Provide Valve a Web API key for the Admin account. If you don't have one, create one here.

Below is a step-by-step test to confirm that GOTV and caster camera/audio are working correctly.

1. Get a vanilla CS game server install using SteamCMD >> app_update 740 validate.

2. Create your game server login token for CS AppID 730 at: https://steamcommunity.com/dev/managegameservers

3. Launch the game server using bash on Linux ./srcds_run -debug -game csgo -console +game_type 0 +game_mode 1 +mapgroup mg_dust247 +map de_dust2 -tickrate 128 +sv_setsteamaccount TOKEN_FROM_PREV_STEP +tv_enable 1 -ip 10.10.10.12

4. On the game server enable GOTV camera man SteamID (and optionally set a shorter TV delay for testing):

   sv_spec_hear 4
   tv_delay 7
   tv_allow_camera_man_steamid STEAM_ID_OF_OBSERVER
   (optionally start GOTV+ broadcast upload)
   

5. Connect players to the game server:

   • one player connect CT (connect XX.XX.XX.XX:27015)
   • tester connect to the GOTV port (connect XX.XX.XX.XX:27020) or start watching playcast

6. Run the game on observer computer with -interactivecaster launch option

7. Connect observer's game to the server as spectator (connect XX.XX.XX.XX:27015, then press 'M' to switch to spectator, will appear on the scoreboard as 'SPEC')

   • Note that the game server will print the following line when your cameraman connects: Adding ID:XXXXXXXX to active caster list!

8. Verify on the game server that players are connected as expected: status

   map     : de_dust2
   gotv[0]:  port 27020, delay 7.0s, rate 32.0
   userid name uniqueid connected ping loss state rate adr
   2 1 "Player1" STEAM_1:1:XXXXXXX 11:35 14 0 active 786432 X.X.X.X:27005
   7 "GOTV" BOT active 32
   10 3 "Player2" STEAM_1:0:XXXXXXX 07:11 17 0 active 786432 X.X.X.X:27005
   

   tv_status

   --- GOTV[0] Status ---
   Online 11:01, FPS 128.0, Version 8378 (Linux)
   Master "GOTV", delay 7, rate 32.0
   Game Time 10:54, Mod "csgo", Map "de_dust2", Players 2
   Local Slots 128, Spectators 1, Proxies 0
   userid name uniqueid connected ping loss state rate adr
    2 1 "Viewer1" STEAM_1:1:3 07:37 35 0 active 196608 X.X.X.X:27005
   

9. GOTV viewer should enable caster camera control and caster voice via scoreboard

10. Observer should start switching camera and narrating the action

11. GOTV viewer in our test sees camera switching and caster's in-game voice narration matching the camerawork

Rules and procedures that pertain to the active administration of the tournaments.

Each team can substitute a player with their registered substitute once during the event.

• A team may make a substitution in-between matches for any reason.
• A team may make a substitution during a match or in-between maps only in the case of a medical emergency.
• Once a substitution has been made, the team can continue to play with the substitute player until they choose to revert to their Core Lineup.
• The substitution rules above apply if a team chooses to revert to their Core Lineup.
• Once the team reverts to the Core Lineup, it may not substitute again for any reason and must play shorthanded or forfeit if the situation arises.

The TO will prevent players from bringing any electronics (e.g., pagers, cell phones, etc.) aside from permitted gaming peripherals (mouse, keyboard, etc) to the competition area by employing a metal detector security detail at the entrance.

Any other items players wish to bring on stage must be inspected by the TO staff.

Aside from the TO staff, only the five players and the team's pre-registered coach are permitted in the competition area during event matches.

Coaches are not to communicate with (i.e., be seen, heard, or felt by) the players by any means at any time with the exception of warmup, half-time, and tactical timeouts.

Coaches that wish to call a timeout are to do so by notifying an admin.

In the case of any matches where event admins are not physically present (e.g. online matches), no team staff, including the coach, may be physically or virtually present or communicate with the players at any time during the match.

Servers must be configured to submit logs and data is to be entered for each match.

1. Provide Valve the Steam ID of the account ("Admin") that will be setting and submitting the match logs in order to enable the Control Room.
2. Provide Valve a Web API key for the Admin account. If you don't have one, create one here.

1. Launch CS from the Admin account, click on Watch, and then click on Control Room button.
2. Fill out the stage, teams and map for the match about to be played. We suggest formatting the match password as follows: teamname1-vs-teamname2-stage-1-of-3-map
3. On the server the match is to be played on, set the following convars.

log on
mp_teamname_1 <Team Name 1>
mp_teamname_2 <Team Name 2>
logaddress_token_secret <match password>
logaddress_add_http <Valve supplied URL>

Return to the Control Room and click the SAVE FINAL SCORE button. This will close out the match in the game for all users and allow them to claim souvenirs.

Obligations that pertain to the completion of the tournaments.

Final Major Rankings are determined by (in order)

1. Position in Champions Stage
2. Elimination Stage W-L record
3. Elimination Stage Difficulty
4. Opening Stage W-L record
5. Opening Stage Difficulty
6. Initial Seeding

Final RMR Rankings for Swiss Formats are determined by (in order)

1. W-L record
2. Difficulty
3. Initial Seeding

Final RMR Rankings for all other formats are determined by final placements.

The final standings for each RMR must be delivered to Valve upon completion of the event.

Deliver to Valve.