A clarification was added to this story. The title was changed from "Valve Releases New Substitute Player Rule for the Dota 2 Majors" to "Valve's New Substitution Rule for the Dota 2 Majors Goes Unnoticed by Community" to more accurately reflect the story.

What do Miracle-, Dendi, KuroKy and BuRNing have in common?

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If you answered: not-qualified-for-the-Boston-Major, then you’d be correct. But they have another thing in common: they are all potential substitute players for teams that ARE qualified.

Valve released a new substitute player rule in stealthy fashion, virtually flying undetected to the community at large. On the Dota 2 Majors Registration site, Valve has decreed that teams going to the Major may get substitute players from any teams not competing in the said Major.

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Here’s the full text of the rules change:

Substitutions work differently in the world of Dota 2, especially when compared with the other MOBA in eSports, League of Legends. In League, a substitute may swap out with a player on the main roster mid-series, as demonstrated by SK Telecom 1 in their matches in the Worlds event where they rotated between junglers Blank and Bengi.

In Dota 2, and particularly the Majors, subs and main roster players may not be swapped out, effectively making substitute players as back-ups should a main roster player be unable to fly to an event either due to Visa troubles or other issues.

But that does open up a few loopholes, as this gives teams an indirect power to “bench” players prior to the event in favor of using a substitute, though it is important to say that a player may not be replaced by the substitute without that player’s consent. The exact details of implementation of the new substitution rule haven’t been released at this point in time.

The last iteration of the substitution rule placed potential sub players in a predicament. Prior to the rule changes, substitutes must be locked in together with the roster lock, meaning that teams would have to look for players who were willing to not be part of a main roster.

Valve’s new rule looks to make the negotiations between teams and players more equitable, as the change would allow teams to utilize good players from teams not competing in the Major without compromising their play time.

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