The organizers of ESL: Road to Rio are going to make changes to the rules regarding the procedure for teams to communicate with coaches. ESL recently sent out a letter to participating teams asking for their opinions on whether coaches should be allowed to be on the server during a match and communicate with players without restrictions. Such a decision will only be made if all teams vote for it. If at least one team is against, coaches will be prohibited from being on the server during the match, and they will not be able to communicate directly with the players.
Many professional players criticized the voting procedure. In their opinion, decisions must be made not unanimously, but by a simple majority, otherwise those teams that play without a coach will simply vote against it in order to deprive their opponents of the coach’s support during the match. In addition, in online tournaments, compliance with this rule will be difficult to control.
The last time changes of this kind were introduced was in 2016, when Valve proposed limiting communication with coaches to warm-ups, timeouts and tactical breaks. Initially, these rules applied only to those events sponsored by Valve, but were quickly adopted by other tournament organizers.
Matches within ESL: Road to Rio will begin this week in Europe and America. Competitions for the CIS countries start on April 30.
