Coach Dmitry "hooch" Bogdanov, who is currently assisting Cloud9, expressed his thoughts on canceling open qualifiers for the upcoming Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 for Counter-Strike 2, scheduled for the end of the year. Bogdanov shared his opinion on his personal Telegram channel.
"If it’s true that there will be no open qualifiers in the EU, it’s really sad. Firstly, any ranking (HLTV, ESL, Valve) is subjective, and Valve's ranking is especially so since it primarily considers prize money. Secondly, this kills the opportunity for a hero to run through open qualifiers for regular hardworking players or teams that have just formed and haven't had the chance to earn enough prize money for the rankings. This isn’t the best news for many teams, but there’s still plenty of time, so I wish all CIS teams to earn as many points (money) as possible. <...>
Another problem is that some wealthy organizations that don’t particularly shine in terms of results can simply organize mini-tournaments with huge prize pools for their teams, thereby boosting their rankings.
As for the argument that it’s easier without open qualifiers because there won’t be issues with cheaters:
1) It’s Valve's fault for not having a proper anti-cheat system;
2) It’s the tournament organizer's fault when there are one and a half admins for a thousand teams during qualifiers;
3) It’s not the fault of regular hardworking players that there are cheaters—they aren’t responsible for others’ mistakes."
Today, tournament operator Perfect World announced details about the upcoming Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 for Counter-Strike 2. Open qualifiers for the RMR tournaments will only be held in Asia. In other regions, there will only be closed qualifiers, and teams will receive participation invites.