CS:GO Rio Major canceled, Valve discusses cheating scandal

(Image credit: ESL)

The ESL and Valve have announced that November's CS:GO Rio Major 2020 has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ESL said that, "We worked through several alternative options down to the last hour to make the Major a reality, but ultimately have to face the fact that the global situation currently does not allow for a Major to take place." Purchased tickets can be refunded but will remain valid and, "New dates will be announced once a return for an in-arena Major is safe for everyone involved."

Valve explained that, "we’re going to hold off on scheduling Majors until, at a minimum, Regional Major Ranking (RMR) LAN events are safe to hold around the world." Online RMR events will continue to be held until then.

Valve also took the opportunity to address the recent news that multiple CS:GO coaches used a spectator bug to cheat in tournaments. "Any teams that were disqualified for exploiting this bug during an RMR event will have their RMR points reset", they said, although action against individual coaches won't go ahead "until we get a complete picture of the extent of the bug abuse and the punishments handed down by third parties. Regardless of those penalties, mid-match coaching will always be a tempting opportunity for some teams to violate the integrity of the match. So we may also consider limitations to coaching."

TOPICS

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.