Valve today addressed to the outrage on their newest coaching policy, strengthening its existence and confirming that they will not be rolling it back. They also shared the logic behind having the game restricted to a 5v5 on the field.
Two days ago, Valve announced a new change in the rules of the coach’s participation in professional matches during the CS:GO majors, wherein, the coach gets limited to only be speaking and guiding the team while off the game. This received mass criticism from the professional players and the talents.
The contributors, however, did have contrary views on this even though being on the same track. The very famous talent brand RoomOnFire which has Anders, Moses and Semmler in their squad had a different perspective on Valve’s take and interestingly, both of them made sense. As per the Moses’ views on this, Valve’s peculiar take on the coach came into existence at a very unnecessary point of time. Whereas, Semmler did a video where he explained the possibility through which Valve must have seen this and proposed the game’s basic dynamics to larger audiences which will help them gain a larger audience to showcase their game.
Deprioritizing the semi-professionals and professionals.
Today, Valve themselves have cleared all the airs of the possibility of the rule getting minor adjustments. After the speculations that this will ruin the career of the many and also will mess up with the structured roles of the professionals’ teams, Valve completely turned a blind eye to them and rigidly released a statement on standing by their new policy. The stated that distributing the in-game and important mechanics of the game was “not in line with our goals” and it will not be permitted in any Valve-sponsored majors and minors.
Valve also shared their concern on a conversation with “an organizer” who were interested in taking things in a different way to create a possibility for the rules being adjusted a bit but was denied moderately. The organizer was not named but it is assumed to be FACEIT as per James’ twitter.
For the record, FACEIT/ECS have no plans to change the coaching situation at our standalone events.
— James Bardolph (@jamesbardolph) August 17, 2016
The complete statement of Valve below:
At past Majors, we have had conversations with pro teams about the participation of their coaches in the gameplay responsibilities of players and they assured us that their coaches focused on activities traditionally associated with coaching, such as preparation, support, opponent study, etc.
We were always open with them about our opinion that distributing the work of 5 players (e.g. keeping track of the economy, calling plays and mid-round calls, and general situational awareness) across 6 people was not in line with our goals, one of which was to make it possible for new teams to emerge and compete at the highest levels. We had no concerns with the other coaching responsibilities and at the time any potential harm was hypothetical.
Since then it has become apparent that teams are, in fact, transitioning away from fielding players that have a wider breadth of skills and instead relying on coaches to handle some of that work.
On August 8th an event organizer forwarded us an email from a coach, representing some top teams, stating that the status-quo was no longer acceptable and that they insisted on more in-game access for coaches during their events. The organizer was aware of our concerns and asked us, in light of the current trend, whether we intended to take a position on coaching.
The forwarded email made it clear that despite the conversations we had with them, teams were further investing in coaching in a way that was contrary to the goals of the Majors and the concerns we had expressed. It was important to make a decision before teams further invested in coach IGLs and we decided to rein in the role of coaching in the next Major to exclude player responsibilities. We informed the event organizer of our decision (see below) and asked them to incorporate our message into their conversation with the pros.
We understand that there will be some short-term disruption for teams that have made an investment in coach IGLs.
However, we intend the Majors and Minors to be events that can be won by any team of 5 players that demonstrate excellence in all skills of CS and this adjustment is intended to ensure that this remains true.
This is just the most recent adaptation in our continuing process of improving the Majors and Minors. As always, you can send us feedback at [email protected]
