Valve Dislikes Partner Teams - What's Next?
Discussing what I think it would mean for Valve, ESL and BLAST in a future where the circuit is more open.
There has been a piece of news that few people have discussed amidst CS2 bugs and rampant roster rumours - the article by Richard Lewis which revealed that Valve had a little chat with ESL and BLAST during the BLAST Paris CS:GO Major about partner teams. Of course, we know very little about it, but there’s a lot to think about and theorise, because the three parties are all at very different levels of negotiating power in my eyes. For this article I want to discuss the three parties, and how they might be affected with respect to some of the factors at play.
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Valve, the infinitely powerful gods, dislike partner teams
Valve are the virtual gods - whatever they say goes. If they wanted every CS2 tournament to open and close with a scripted prayer to GabeN they could do it and refuse to licence all other tournaments. This belies the reality, which is that Valve have a “set it and forget it” mentality when it comes to CS, and esports is no different. Don’t just take it from me - in their 2019 article, Valve themselves said “We make it free to get a license to operate a CSGO tournament because we want to get out of the way of third parties creating value for our customers.”
Suffice to say it seems Valve is interested in the partner team discussion amidst complaints that the scene is becoming insulated in some ways, and the Major format tells us what Valve wants for the esports scene - open qualification, five players (and a silent, emotionless coach), equal opportunity.
Valve already had to step in before the partner team agreements went through in the first iterations, where it potentially prevented partners from playing in rival tournaments, and stated in no uncertain terms that this was not what they wanted for CS.
They solved half of the riddle - making sure the partner teams could get out, preventing insulated bubbles of competition. The second half, how non-partners could get in, was left unsaid because at the time there were many more tournaments and events that were not related to partner teams, which is completely different from how the scene is now, and the primary concern would have been exclusivity preventing the most well known and skilled teams from playing in the same tournaments as the lower tier teams who played in the non-partner events.
It was perhaps masked by COVID in 2020 which happened at the same time both these partner leagues began (ESL and BLAST). A long period of uncertainty and financial instability both globally and in esports meant that it was unknown what direction CS would take once it returned to LAN, or indeed how much of the perceived issues with the scene were due to the pandemic versus the partner system.
By now it has been over three seasons of LAN CS:GO since the pandemic “ended”. While we have been struck with other crises since, like the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it’s clear that the scene isn’t going back to the hectic event schedule it used to have. It is also largely limited to the two TOs we are discussing here, ESL and BLAST, with notable TOs like PGL and EPICENTER both no longer hosting events on the scale they did before, for various reasons. And it is perhaps the two recent Majors, Rio and Paris, which were the last straw.
I’m not here to make a comment on the level of CS that we are at currently in this article - there are players and talent who believe that the level has continued to increase, there are players and talent who believe that this is the worst it has been in many years. But it is undeniable that the amount of upsets at Majors has led to some of the most unsatisfying brackets to ever grace the Major stage, and people have suggested this is due to that insulated bubble I mentioned earlier.
Valve noticed this and want to set it straight, and I think some of the wording in their original 2019 article should be as interesting to you as it was to me. Valve specifically talk about how they would not support decisions from which “it would be hard for the ecosystem to recover”, and referred to exclusivity as “an experiment that could cause long-term damage”.
They also said it would prevent other events from “keeping the CSGO ecosystem functioning” if the exclusive events failed - and if you apply this philosophy to the broader issue of partnered leagues today you can see what Valve may wish to do. At this point the biggest non-partnered events are the Majors, and their product has perhaps suffered the most. Format discussions aside, it’s bad for the Majors if the best teams in the CS circuit are not the best teams in the Major circuit, and if eliminating or reducing the partnered nature of the leagues will mend that issue then Valve will push for that.
ESL - grin and bear it
ESL, or rather EFG, having recently received the backing of a very rich regime and having a stronghold on CS esports calendars at the moment, aren't completely powerless in this discussion. Whatever everyone thinks of their ownership is irrelevant by now given the amount of power they have over the scene, from the low level tournaments like the Challenger events to the biggest trophies in Katowice and Cologne.
The reduction or elimination of partner teams, while it would be painful for their products and finances, wouldn’t kill them off entirely by any stretch. You might see some concessions made to their events, or perhaps less work put into their streams, so on and so forth, but they were able to put on top notch events before they had partner teams and no doubt they could do the same in CS2 if they were forced to.
BLAST may implode…
BLAST are perhaps the weakest party discussed so far. Ever since 2020 the organiser has been running their little circus of partner teams and 8 team events as "flagship" trophies, and they’ve been backed by nothing but their sponsors and what they can take from venture capitalists looking to burn money. A large part of their funds likely came from the 12 partner teams buying into what is essentially a closed circuit competition with a few open slots down the line, at undisclosed amounts that are at least 7 figures.
Given that ESL extended their Louvre agreement until the end of 2025, but no news has been heard of BLAST extending their partner deal, a difficult conversation may be taking place very soon at BLAST. If it is only a requirement to open all tournaments to some degree while still enabling partnered teams to exist, they might simply have to sacrifice a lot across the board to add more slots for their group stages and finals. However, if anything more drastic occurs, I suspect BLAST may restructure their entire circuit or perhaps even disappear entirely.
An interesting dynamic to note is that ESL can weather the storm much easier than BLAST can, and ESL also would love complete control of the circuit (even more complete than it is now). In negotiations, ESL could strategically side with Valve just to push BLAST over the edge and ensure their dominant calendar remains that way.
Orgs weren’t invited but might suffer the most
The silent fourth party, teams/organisations, may have the most to lose. Everyone has been talking about how ENCE are making great financial decisions - a lot of their money has been made from the partner team system. Removing the long term incentive for organisations to have a roster in CS:GO may result in a lot of organisations simply no longer investing as much. At the end of the day even the companies with holes in all of their pockets from the burnt money would think twice if they were forced to qualify for every event instead of getting a nice ranking boost from their status as a partner.
The article by RL mentions that ESL is planning to discuss how to proceed with the leadership from the organisations they are partnered with - I suspect Valve will care very little if at all about them. After all, they provide merit-based financial incentives with their stickers, so I can’t see them being swayed by the argument that organisations would leave the scene.
What happened? What next?
We don’t know what’s going to happen to the scene, but one thing’s for sure; when Valve do decide to make decisions, they don’t mess around. At the end of the day, esports is just a big walking advertisement for their game, and if Valve have identified partner teams as the cause of their advertisement reaching less people then there’s not much they wouldn’t do to change that, especially going into a new and more friendly game with CS2.
My personal guess is that they are going to mandate a percentage of teams that must be given access through open qualification in any tournament, something like 50%. This would leave the TOs with a clear idea of what they are expected to do while not killing the concept of a partner team entirely, and if a middle ground was to be reached that would be it in my eyes.
I hope that in a few years we can look back on their decision and thank them for making the esports scene much more competitive and fair for all teams.
Afterword
Thank you for reading this article - I had a few thoughts about this topic and I think a lot of people missed out on the news amidst all the roster reports and CS2 bugs. Shout out to Richard Lewis for the article, though he certainly doesn’t need any props from me.
More analytical numerical articles soon, but then again, I might just wait until CS:GO is over entirely, who knows!