The newest post on Valve’s official CSGO blog gives a brief heads up to teams participating in Majors starting in 2020. Mainly, all teams will have to disclose any conflicts of interest. Named “Keeping Things Transparent,” the blog post is a reply to a previous post, “Keeping Things Competitive,” which touched upon the happenings of the previous Starladder Major in Berlin.
Transparency as the priority
Ever since the term “Blastralis” was coined, the CSGO community has been distraught by the transparency of teams and organizations. When everyone found out that Astralis and the Blast Pro Series tournaments were owned by RFRSH Entertainment, the community went into a frenzy, accusing Astralis of deliberately skipping events in order to perform at their best at Blast events.
These days, Astralis is no longer associated with Blast. It was decided that would be the best option for the team as well as the tournament organizers in order to avoid future unnecessary accusations of conflicts of interest. Despite that, the community has grown cautious, and more research has gone into uncovering other possible conflicts that may seem fishy for the community. This is definitely one of the reasons behind Valve’s policy ahead of 2020.
Starladder repercussions
The previous CSGO Starladder Major saw massive criticism because of never-before-seen rules that the tournament organizers imposed on content creators. YouTubers and streamers such as fl0m or WarOwl received either warnings or DMCAs for commenting over the in-game stream live. This was never an issue before, but following these rules by Starladder, content creators were left confused by their demands. These included having the tournament organizer’s sponsors on the stream, which could create even more conflicts of interest. You can find out in detail what happened by watching WarOwl’s thoughts and explanation on the matter.
We have yet to see how things concerning rights and transparency will be resolved in 2020. One thing is sure, however. 2019 was a year that saw CSGO grow – but with that growth, underlying problems in the scene started to surface.
What do you think of Valve’s approach to transparency ahead of 2020? Let us know down in the comments below. As always, remember to follow us at Daily Esports for all your latest news in CSGO as well as other major esports.
