Perfect World have announced the details of the CS Asia Championship (CAC) 2025, a $1,000,000 prize pool tournament taking place in Shanghai from October 14-19. The tournament has faced scrutiny as observers have noted that it breaks several of Valve’s Tournament Operation Requirements (TOR).
Perfect World have announced that there are nine directly invited teams, with eight teams invited based on VRS ranking and FaZe’s invite coming from their 2023 victory at the event.
Invited teams are: FaZe Clan, TYLOO, 3DMAX, Lynn Vision, paiN Gaming, Virtus.pro, Liquid, Legacy, and B8. The remaining seven teams will come from regional qualifiers, with EU having four qualification spots, China two, and the Americas one. The qualifiers themselves have been the source of some consternation.
Previously, the qualifiers had been listed as two slots for an “Asia” qualifier, now replaced by a Chinese-only qualifier. Australian Caster, Jordan ‘Elfishguy’ Mays, noted that the qualification changes meant the event was “Not really living up [to] the ‘CS Asia Championship’ name.”
NA has also had its qualifier removed in favour of the Americas spot. The change to ‘Americas,’ with the servers hosted in Brazil, effectively changes the slot to a South American slot, as ping issues would prevent NA teams from competing.
What are Tournament Operation Requirements?
Tournament Operation Requirements (TOR) are the rules which regulate Counter-Strike tournaments as set out by Valve prior to the shift to the VRS system. Tournaments which do not adhere to TOR are theoretically meant to be unranked, in which case they would have limited permitted amounts of prize money and not count towards VRS.
The frustration resulting from the CAC announcement results from a build-up of sentiment that the Tournament Operations Requirements are unevenly or loosely policed by Valve, with some tournaments getting several exceptions, which permit them to not adhere to the rules.
In CAC’s case, the tournament has the following exception: “May invite two past winners of prior CAC events as Wildcard invitations.”
This exception allows FaZe to attend, despite the tournament theoretically being a Tier Two event, which would normally mean invites must start from #13 in the world and lower. FaZe were number 7 in the VRS at the last official snapshot (July 7). The international roster will start the tournament as the heavy favourites with esports betting sites, but many will be left wondering whether they should ever be there.
Additionally, Perfect World have announced changes to their ‘Additional Information’ with their invites – a required set of details which are meant to be published prior to invites. The changes mean that the teams attending the event have drastically changed, with the number of VRS slots changing, and the regions of qualifiers changing.
Complexity CS2 General Manager, Graham ‘messioso’ Pitt, pointed out the “mockery” of the rules, stating, “I really want to hone in on one thing in particular that makes a mockery of integrity and the entire VRS ecosystem. CAC has now invited teams from the July VRS, without having announced their slot distribution beforehand.
“This means that they essentially could just decide when to stop inviting teams based on whether they felt the team was worth inviting. Don’t like the next team in line? Oh we’ll just have 9 invites instead of the originally planned 10 and move that lost slot to a qualifier. If I was @MIBR right now, I’d be seriously infuriated as the next team in line.”
Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.