Counter-Strike 2 esports: the game and its pro scene

Counter-Strike 2 in brief

Counter-Strike 2 is a free-to-play competitive action game developed and published by Valve; at the top level, it is played by teams of five. It carries on a series that has offered high-level competition for more than twenty years, built on the objective-based play the original Counter-Strike introduced in 1999. It arrived as a free upgrade to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Recent Majors have used the maps of the Active Duty group, with the two teams taking turns striking and picking maps before each series. Matches deciding whether a team goes through or goes out have been a best of three, the others a single map.

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How Counter-Strike 2 esports works

Counter-Strike tournaments, the Majors included, are staged by organisers who need a licence from Valve. In Valve's view, Counter-Strike must remain an open sport, so its rules for large tournaments limit direct invitations, require transparency on what teams are paid and forbid deals that would keep teams out of other competitions.

Invitations to the biggest events follow the Valve Regional Standings (VRS), Valve's official ranking of rosters, which is updated regularly from the results of the tournaments that count towards it.

Organisers also build their own circuits, such as the ESL Pro Tour, meant to lead from amateur level to the professional game. Valve revises its requirements from time to time and formats vary, so each competition's official site is the place to check how it currently works.

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The Major and the other big tournaments

The Major is the Counter-Strike tournament sponsored by Valve. In Valve's words, it aims to gather the world's best players on LAN, let them fight for the title and show millions of players how high the level can go.

An organiser stages each Major, but Valve sets rules that must be identical at every one, from invitations, handed out according to the Valve Regional Standings, to the format. Recent Majors have whittled the field down over several Swiss-system stages, in which teams meet opponents with the same record, before the last eight play a knockout bracket.

Organisers also run big events of their own, such as ESL's Intel Extreme Masters (IEM), a series that Intel and ESL launched in 2006.

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How to watch Counter-Strike 2 esports

Organisers broadcast their tournaments on their official channels on the main streaming platforms, often across several parallel streams. ESL, for one, lets community creators broadcast its open qualifiers on their own channels under its guidelines, while its main events are kept for the official broadcast and approved partners.

Valve's rules oblige organisers to publish key details in advance, such as the dates, which stages are online or on LAN, how teams are invited and how the prize pool is shared, so each tournament's official site is the best place to find them.

At a Major, match results also reach the game itself, whose client shows them to all players.

Sources: [2] [3] [4] [5]