Ifølge en email sendt fra ESL til en række professionelle teams, har Valve indført en regel angående coaches og deres muligheder for at kommunikere med deres hold under en kamp ved Valve-sponsorerede events. ESL har valgt at følge dette tiltag fra Valve, som de fleste organisationer plejer at gøre i forhold til, hvad Valve gør.

Ved den næste Major og ESL One New York, kan coaches kun kommunikere med spillerne under opvarmningen, pausen efter 15 runder, og ved tactical timeouts, hvor de har introduceret at holdene i stedet har 4x30 sekunders timeout pr. map.

Det kommer til at være enormt hæmmende for mange hold, som har tilføjet og brugt coaches som deres ingame leader, og mange hold har opbygget deres teams omkring dette. Det er bl.a. Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Liquid, Cloud9, mousesports og Dignitas.

Den fulde mail:

"With unrestricted commuinication with their players, coaches can currently function as a sixth player, and not solely as a source of guidance or training. Activities such as keeping track of the economy, calling plays, and general situational awareness are important components of CS gameplay. If a person is performing these actions, we consider them a player.

Since the goal of our events is to identify the best five-player CS teams that exhibit the best combination of all CS skills, the current participation of coaches in the game is not compatible with that goal. To address this problem, future Valve sponsored events will enforce the following coaching rules:

During a match, the coach may only communicate with the players during warmup, half-time, or during one of four 30 second timeouts that the coach or player can call.

Obviously, third party events can use whatever rules they want but if you want to align your events with ours then we recommend using this coaching rule.

Ido Magal"

Det virker som et kæmpe skridt tilbage for CS:GO, og at Valve endnu engang lancerer et ikke gennemtænkt produkt til CS:GO.

Det er også, hvad en række spillere har været ude og sige: 

Hvad mener du? Er det et godt tiltag, eller er det et facepalm?