Mauisnake: Why Don’t HLTV’s MVP Selection Criteria Make Sense?

For a professional CS player, the highest honor combo you can realistically achieve at a single event is probably lifting the trophy while also wearing the HLTV MVP medal.

In professional CS, the only body that has long been genuinely recognized by the community and has consistently handed out MVP medals is, for all practical purposes, HLTV. Even though HLTV has been naming event MVPs since 2012, in recent years, the controversy around its selection standards and consistency has only grown.

And the reality is: this standard has never really been applied consistently.

Some people might think: what’s the big deal? If a website occasionally hands the MVP to the second- or third-best player at an event, it hardly seems like it would affect the entire CS world. Some viewers have even said in my stream, the pro players themselves don’t care about this stuff.

But if you actually follow pro CS, you know that argument does not hold up.

During the 2025 HLTV Awards, Striker said that although donk was miles ahead of ZywOo in individual numbers, the race for No. 1 of the year was "not even close" because ZywOo had more MVP medals.

If you think donk doesn't care whether he's world No. 1, that only shows you haven't really been paying attention to him. Since MVP medals are one of the most important criteria in the HLTV Top 20, of course pro players care about whether they can win MVPs.

I’ve even personally seen pro players open HLTV between two maps of a BO3 just to check their own stats.

This is exactly why inconsistent MVP criteria become a real problem.

HLTV Top 20 gets written into history. Years later, when people look back at who the best player in the world was in a given year, or who did not even make the list, these rankings become a key reference point.

Every time an MVP medal is handed out, it is, in some small way, writing that history.

HLTV’s first-ever MVP was even decided by a fan vote

Let’s go back to the first MVP medal in HLTV history.

HLTV’s first MVP news post

At DreamHack Valencia in September 2012, f0rest became the first MVP in HLTV history.

And this MVP was selected as follows: 70% fan vote, 30% expert panel.

That’s right, you didn’t misread it. The first MVP in HLTV history was not decided by the stats, nor was it judged by a small group of HLTV staff. It was determined mainly by fan voting.

Before getting into some of the more questionable MVP picks in HLTV history, there is one more thing that matters a lot: in December 2018, Tgwri1s made a Reddit post laying out his philosophy for MVP selection in detail, and that framework more or less became the foundation for how HLTV awards MVPs today.

Response from Tgwri1s, the sole early HLTV MVP judge

This is worth bringing up, because when we talk about data-driven MVP selections, one common rebuttal is: what if the IGL was actually the person who contributed the most to the team’s title run?

Tgwri1s said at the time that he would rather “focus on the things that can be understood and measured”, adding, “Everything beyond that falls into the intangible category for me, and I have to accept that I simply cannot know exactly how much value it adds or takes away.”

I actually think this is very reasonable.

That’s because most so-called "intangible contributions" are, at their core, built from broadcast interviews, snippets of team comms, and the narratives constructed by casters and analysts.

Next, I want to go through a few of the most questionable MVP cases in HLTV history, in reverse chronological order.

BLAST Open Porto 2026: donk or sh1ro?

One recent example was BLAST Open Porto, where donk ultimately beat out sh1ro for the MVP.

If you look only at the playoffs, sh1ro's Rating was 1.31, while donk's was 1.21. That is already a pretty clear gap, and in the past, a gap like that would usually have been enough to make sh1ro the MVP.

Not only that, in the final group-stage match against FURIA, sh1ro also had the higher Rating at 1.33, while donk was at 1.31.

When HLTV explained why it handed the MVP to donk, the first thing it pointed to was donk's outrageous 1.61 Rating in the group stage.

But the problem is, are we suddenly putting this much weight on group-stage performances now?

In the past, top-tier group-stage performances rarely even helped players earn an EVP, with very few exceptions, such as kyousuke at IEM Cologne 2025.

HLTV also cited kills per round won (KPRW) as a metric. When only matches against top-five opponents are counted, donk does clearly lead sh1ro: 1.24 to 1.02.

But making the case for sh1ro is actually pretty simple: against top-five opponents in the world, he posted a higher Rating and Round Swing.

BLAST Bounty S2 2026: Why did Spinx beat out torzsi?

Another recent case came at BLAST Bounty S2 2026, where Spinx beat out torzsi for the MVP.

Before the grand final, Spinx was not even really in the MVP conversation at all.

And this time, HLTV seems to have directly contradicted its own selection logic again.

Between Spinx and torzsi, the player with the higher overall KPRW was torzsi: 1.02 to 0.91. (Translator's note: remember KPRW — kills per round won; it will come up later.)

On top of that, torzsi also posted better overall numbers across the entire event.If you count the online group stage as well, the gap is even more obvious.

The one match where Spinx was genuinely, clearly ahead of torzsi was the grand final against Spirit — Spinx posted a 1.54 Rating, while torzsi only managed 1.05.

But for roughly the past seven years, the HLTV MVP has been understood as an award for the entire event, not a grand final MVP.

If torzsi had not kept converting crucial clutches in those earlier series MOUZ nearly lost, MOUZ might not even have made the grand final.

However, HLTV's explanation for this was: "The medal has to go to the player who contributed more in the later stages of the event."

Budapest Major: ropz or ZywOo?

And that brings us to one of the most controversial MVP picks in recent Major history: StarLadder Budapest Major.

ropz ultimately lost out to ZywOo, even though their numbers were almost impossible to separate and it was only in the grand final that a real gap opened up.

In the grand final, ropz put up a 1.39 Rating, while ZywOo was at 1.23.

And across all the playoff matches before that, the two players had identical Ratings.

Only once you include the group stage does ZywOo edge out ropz for the event-wide Rating, and even then only by a razor-thin 0.01.

Even more absurdly, on the fourth and final map of the Major, ropz posted the highest single-map Rating of his career — 2.89.

If you go back and look at HLTV’s bar chart for that map, ropz’s Rating was so high it literally went off the chart.

Budapest Major Grand Final Overpass single-map Rating

But HLTV ultimately said the decisive metric was KPRW: ZywOo was at 1.17, while ropz was at 1.02.

That’s where the problem starts.

The same metric was not enough to get torzsi the MVP when he led Spinx in it; yet when it came to ropz and ZywOo, it suddenly became the deciding factor in who got the MVP.

Previously, Spinx could overturn torzsi with one outstanding grand final, but ropz could not overturn ZywOo despite an even stronger grand final performance.

IEM Sydney 2023: The Most Absurd MVP in CS2 History?

If I had to pick the wildest MVP of the CS2 era, I’d go with the very first MVP HLTV handed out in the CS2 era—rain at IEM Sydney 2023.

At the time, ropz had:

a higher overall Rating, a higher playoff Rating, a higher grand final Rating, and a higher KPRW.

So what exactly did rain rely on to win the MVP?

The answer is: "the stats from the third deciding map."

I hadn't seen that standard before, and I haven't seen it again since.

FaZe only played one Map 3 decider across their seven playoff maps; the other three series that went the full three maps all came in the group stage.

In other words, HLTV handed rain the MVP because of his high Rating across one playoff map and three group-stage maps.

In my view, this makes no sense at all.

There are many similar cases as well

There are also quite a few cases in HLTV history where, in my view, the MVP was given to the wrong player.

For example, iM at IEM Rio 2024, and MSL at DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018, are both glaring examples.

If you revisit these results using any of the standards HLTV has publicly relied on before or after these events, I think they are all hard to square with themselves.

HLTV is still one of the best websites in esports.

After all that, I still think HLTV is one of the best websites in all of esports, let alone in CS.

Rating 3.0 was a very important step forward, and Rating 2.1 was as well.

HLTV Top 20 remains one of the key honors used to document the greatest players in CS history, and the HLTV Awards have also become a standout celebration at the end of each professional CS season.

But that does not mean HLTV is above criticism.

When its MVP criteria are not applied consistently from one case to the next, and those awards directly shape the year-end Top 20 and a player's historical standing, it is necessary to point out the problem.