For a professional CS player, the highest combination of honors in a tournament is probably lifting the champion trophy while wearing the HLTV MVP medal.
In the professional CS scene, the only institution that has long been truly widely recognized by the community and consistently awards MVP medals is essentially HLTV. Although HLTV has been selecting tournament MVPs since 2012, controversies surrounding its selection criteria and consistency have grown in recent years.
The fact is: this set of standards was never really unified.
Some might think, "So what?" A website occasionally giving the MVP award to the second or third-best player in a tournament doesn't seem to impact the entire CS world much. In fact, even viewers in my livestream have said that professional players themselves don't care about these things.
But if you really follow professional CS, you would know that this claim doesn't hold true.
During the 2025 HLTV awards ceremony, Striker mentioned that even though donk far outperforms ZywOo in individual stats, due to ZywOo having more MVP medals, the two are "not even close" in the race for Player of the Year.
If you think donk doesn't care whether he's the world number one, that only shows you haven't been following him closely. Since the MVP medal is one of the most important criteria in HLTV's annual Top 20 ranking, professional players certainly care about whether they can win an MVP.
I've even seen professional players directly open HLTV to check their own stats between two maps in a BO3.
That's why the lack of consistency in MVP selection criteria is becoming a real problem.
The HLTV annual Top 20 will be written into history. Years later, when people look back on who was the best player in the world in a given year and who didn't even make the list, these rankings will serve as an important reference.
And every time an MVP medal is awarded, it is, to some extent, writing this piece of history.
HLTV's first MVP, even decided by fan voting
Let's return to the first MVP medal in HLTV's history.
HLTV's First MVP Coverage
DreamHack Valencia 2012 in September, f0rest became the first MVP in HLTV history.
And the selection criteria for this MVP is: 70% fan voting, 30% expert evaluation.
That's right, you read that correctly. The first MVP in HLTV history was not awarded based on data, nor was it decided by a small group of HLTV's internal staff; it was mainly determined by fan voting.
Before discussing some questionable MVPs in HLTV history, there's one very important thing: In December 2018, Tgwri1s posted on Reddit detailing his philosophy behind MVP selection, which basically laid the foundation for today's HLTV MVP evaluation.
HLTV MVP's only early judge Tgwri1s's reply
This topic is worth discussing because when we talk about data-driven MVP selection, a common counterargument is: What if the commander role is actually the biggest contributor to the team's championship?
Tgwri1s stated at the time that he would rather "focus on what can be known and measured," adding, "Everything beyond that is all intangibles to me. I have to accept that I cannot know exactly how much value they add or subtract."
I think this point is actually very reasonable.
Because most so-called "intangible contributions" essentially stem from broadcast interviews, team audio snippets, and the narratives constructed by commentators and analysts.
Next, I'd like to discuss a few MVP cases that I consider the most questionable in HLTV history, in reverse chronological order.
BLAST Open Porto 2026: donk or sh1ro?
A recent example was the BLAST Open Porto event, where donk ultimately defeated sh1ro to claim the MVP title.
If looking only at the playoffs, sh1ro's Rating is 1.31, while donk's is 1.21. This is already a quite noticeable gap, and in the past, such a difference would typically be enough for sh1ro to be the MVP.
Not only that, in the final group stage match against FURIA, sh1ro also had a higher rating of 1.33, while donk had 1.31.
HLTV, when explaining why they awarded the MVP to donk, first mentioned donk's "staggering 1.61 Rating during the group stage."
But the question is, are we now suddenly putting so much importance on the group stage performance?
In the past, top performances in group stages have rarely helped players secure EVP, with extremely rare exceptions like kyousuke at IEM Cologne 2025.
HLTV also referenced the Kills Per Round Won (KPRW) statistic. When only counting matches against top-five opponents, donk indeed holds a clear lead over sh1ro: 1.24 compared to 1.02.
But defending sh1ro is actually quite simple: against the top five opponents in the world, he holds a higher Rating and Round Swing.
BLAST Bounty S2 2026：Why did Spinx win against torzsi?
Another recent example is Spinx defeating torzsi to win the MVP at 2026 BLAST Bounty S2.
Before the finals, Spinx wasn't really even in the MVP race.
And this time, HLTV seems to have directly contradicted its own evaluation logic again.
Between Spinx and torzsi, the one with the higher overall KPRW (Kills Per Round Won) is torzsi: 1.02 versus 0.91. (Translator's note: Remember KPRW—kills per round won—it will be mentioned later.)
In addition, torzsi's overall performance throughout the tournament has been better. If the online group stages are also included, the advantage becomes even more pronounced.
Spinx truly significantly outperformed torzsi only in the Grand Final against Spirit—Spinx achieved a 1.54 Rating, while torzsi managed only 1.05.
However, for the past seven years, the HLTV MVP has been understood as a tournament-wide award, not just an award for the grand final MVP.
If Torzsi hadn't continuously delivered clutch rounds in those earlier series where they almost lost, MOUZ might not have made it to the finals at all.
However, HLTV's explanation for this was: "The medal must be awarded to players who contributed more at later stages of the event."
Budapest Major: ropz or ZywOo?
This brings us to one of the most controversial MVPs in recent Major history—the StarLadder Budapest Major.
ropz ultimately lost to ZywOo, despite the two players' statistics being nearly inseparable until the finals when a clear gap finally emerged.
In the finals, ropz achieved a 1.39 Rating, while ZywOo had a 1.23.
And in all previous knockout matches, the two had identical Ratings.
Only after including the group stage did ZywOo's tournament-wide rating marginally lead ropz's by 0.01.
Even more impressively, on the fourth and final map of the Major, ropz achieved his career-high single-map Rating of 2.89.
If you go back and look at the HLTV map statistics bar chart, ropz's rating was so high it was literally off the charts.
Budapest Major Finals Overpass Single Map Rating
However, HLTV ultimately stated that the key metric in deciding the winner was KPRW: ZywOo at 1.17, ropz at 1.02.
Problems then arise.
The same metric, when torzsi led Spinx, was insufficient to help torzsi secure MVP; yet between ropz and ZywOo, it suddenly became the decisive factor in determining the MVP.
Previously, Spinx managed to reverse torzsi with an outstanding Grand Final performance, but ropz could not reverse ZywOo despite his stronger showing in the Grand Final.
IEM Sydney 2023: The most outrageous MVP in CS2 history?
If I were to choose the most extraordinary MVP of the CS2 era, I would go with the first MVP awarded by HLTV in the CS2 era—rain at IEM Sydney 2023.
At the time, ropz had:
Higher overall Rating, higher playoff Rating, higher finals Rating, and higher KPRW.
What exactly did Rain rely on to win the MVP?
The answer is: "the data in the third decisive map."
I have never seen this standard before, nor will I ever again.
Throughout the entire playoffs, FaZe only played a decisive third map in one out of seven maps, while the other three series that went to a full three maps all occurred in the group stage.
In other words, HLTV awarded the MVP to rain because of his high Rating in one elimination map and three group stage maps.
In my opinion, this makes no sense at all.
There are many similar cases
In HLTV history, there have been numerous cases where I believe the MVP was awarded to the wrong recipient.
For example, iM at IEM Rio 2024 and MSL at DreamHack Stockholm 2018 are both very clear examples.
If scrutinized against any of the standards HLTV has publicly used around these events, I find these results difficult to justify as internally consistent.
HLTV is still one of the best websites in the esports field
Having said all that, I still believe that HLTV is one of the best websites in the entire esports industry, not to mention the CS scene.
Rating 3.0 is a significant improvement, and Rating 2.1 is as well.
HLTV's annual Top 20 remains an important honor system for recording the greatest players in CS history, and the HLTV Awards have also become a remarkable celebration at the end of each professional CS season.
This doesn't mean HLTV can't be questioned.
When its MVP selection criteria are inconsistent from one year to the next, and these awards directly influence the annual Top 20 and players' historical standing, it becomes necessary to point out the problems.