Valve updated its guidelines on Thursday regarding the participation of VAC banned players in Valve-sponsored CS:GO events. Going forward, Valve explained that  a VAC ban will "disqualify a player from an event if it was either received less than 5 years prior, or if it was received at any time after their first participation in a Valve-sponsored event."

"Up until today, players were ineligible to participate in Valve-sponsored events if they had ever received a VAC-ban in CS:GO," Valve explained in their announcement post. "These guidelines had not seen an update since the game was new and all CS:GO VAC bans were relatively recent. But VAC bans can now be more than 8 years old. So we’ve decided to update them."

This update is huge for a number of CS:GO professionals who received VAC bans in the past for a variety of reasons, leading to the end of their CS:GO career, at least when it comes to competing at Valve sponsored Major events. 

Elias “jamppi” Olkkonen is one of the most notable CS:GO talents who can now return to Valve majors. Jamppi is a Finnish CS:GO prodigy whose name was tied to a VAC-banned account from 2013, that Jamppi claims to have sold to a friend before any cheating took place. Nonetheless, Valve officially banned the young star, which led to a lawsuit against Valve and his eventual switch to VALORANT. He tweeted his thankfulness at being unbanned on Thursday.

Brazilian Vinicius “vsm” Moreira will also be eligible to return to Valve-sponsored events under the new RMR ruling. vsm was banned for using cheat software when he was 13-years-old. For years, fans of vsm have been using #FreeVSM to demand the player be unbanned. Today Valve honored their request.

Valve provided a road to redemption for a lot of players in Thursday's rulings. It will be interesting to see what formerly banned players make their way out of the woodwork, now that they are eligible to compete at Majors once again.