Valve Published Its September Counter-Strike Ranking a Day Late and Then Had to Remove an Event That Had Not Finished
Valve's September VRS ranking arrived a day late, was backdated to 7 September and was then corrected to remove an unfinished event.
Valve released the September edition of the Valve Regional Standings, the Counter-Strike 2 ranking tournament organisers use for invitations and seeding, a day later than usual and then corrected it after it was found to include results from an event that had not finished, HLTV reported on 9 September.
The ranking is normally published on the first Monday of each month. Because Monday 7 September was Labor Day, a US federal holiday, it arrived on the evening of Tuesday 8 September instead.
Valve dated the release 7 September, but according to HLTV it appeared to use data from 8 September. That mattered because ESL Challenger Season 52 Europe Cup 6 had not finished by 7 September, yet its results were included and altered the rankings of several teams.
The delay caused problems for organisers who had set their invite and seeding dates for 7 September. Valve's Tournament Operation Requirements oblige an operator to use the most recent version of the ranking as of the invite date. HLTV noted that, applied strictly, organisers with a 7 September invite date would technically have had to rely on the ranking published at the start of August.
HLTV later updated its report to say Valve had fixed the September ranking and removed events that were unfinished at the time.
Team Spirit stayed first in the ranking for a third consecutive month.
The standings decide invitations across the Counter-Strike calendar, and several events were running or qualifying this week, including FISSURE Playground 3 in Suzhou and regional qualifiers for PGL Masters Bucharest.