These players won’t earn between five and six figures each because of Valve’s rules for Major stickers.
Part of the excitement of qualifying for a Major is immortalizing your nickname in the game thanks to the sticker, but four CS2 pros didn't get this honor at the Shanghai Major.
The players in question are the Swedish AWPer Tim "nawwk" Jonasson (Fnatic), the Russian rifler Timofey "interz" Yakushin (Cloud9), the Danish rifler Sebastian "Tauson" Tauson (GamerLegion), and the Brazilian rifler Lucas "Lucaozy" Neves (MIBR).
Here's why none of them get a Shanghai CS2 Major sticker despite qualifying for the competition with their respective teams at the Europe RMR.
Update Nov. 29: This article has been updated after Perfect World announced that Lucaozy got his stickers by mistake. Valve will remove Lucaozy's stickers and replace them with brnz4n's signature.
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Why did nawwk, interz, Lucaozy, and Tauson not get a Shanghai Major sticker?
Nawwk, interz, Lucaozy, and Tauson didn't get a sticker because they were all registered as substitute players for Fnatic, Cloud9, MIBR, and GamerLegion, respectively. According to Valve's rules, only the team's starters at the time of the roster submission get stickers.
So, despite playing at the RMR and helping their team qualify for the Shanghai Major, they don't earn stickers. Instead, their stickers went to players who are no longer playing for Fnatic, Cloud9, and GamerLegion. These are:
- Aurélien "afro" Drapier (Fnatic)
- Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy (Cloud9)
- Breno "brnz4n" Poletto (MIBR)
- Andreas "aNdu" Maasing (GamerLegion)
As a result of this Valve rule, the revenue from sticker sales will go to afro, Perfecto, brnz4n and aNdu. This is a massive blow to nawwk, interz, Lucaozy, and Tauson as the sticker money is significantly high — between five and six figures — but especially to the latter.
After all, the Shanghai Major is Tauson's first Major ever. Naawk had already qualified twice with his former team Apeks and interz qualified three other times with Gambit and Cloud9.
At least, this might have been the last time that players suffered this injustice. From 2025 onwards, there will be no more RMRs, so teams won't have to register active players as substitutes to circumvent the roster deadline.
The Perfect World Shanghai CS2 Major kicks off on Saturday, Nov. 30 with 16 teams battling out in the Opening Stage.
That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more CS2 and Shanghai Major content.
