Valve Reverses Policy: karrigan Gets His Major Trophy
karrigan received the in-game trophy for winning IEM Cologne Major — under Valve's old policy, substitutes got nothing. What changed and for whom.
Finn "karrigan" Andersen has received the in-game trophy for winning IEM Cologne Major 2026 — permanently immortalized in his Steam inventory. That sounds routine, but it marks a reversal of Valve's policy: until now, players registered for a Major as substitutes received no in-game awards at all — the trophy went to the player they were standing in for. For karrigan, who was formally listed as a substitute on Falcons' roster, the old rule would have meant a Major title with no trophy to show for it.
How the old rule worked
Valve's logic was straightforward: in-game awards were tied to the main five registered for the Major. If an organization changed a player mid-cycle, the stand-in played on someone else's behalf — and the trophy for the result was credited to the player from the original registration, even if that player never played a single round at the event. Substitutes kept the result in their statistics, but got no artifact in their inventory.
Why karrigan was listed as a substitute at all
Falcons benched kyxsan on April 20, and karrigan took over the IGL role mid-cycle — formally as a substitute, though nobody doubted the Dane was staying for good. What happened next you already know: Falcons won IEM Cologne Major through the second-hardest playoff run in Major history, and karrigan claimed the second Major of his career. Under the old policy, that title would have landed in kyxsan's Steam inventory.
karrigan's case wasn't the only one in Cologne either: another stand-in, who played as a replacement on a quarterfinalist team, also received the in-game award for a top-8 finish. This isn't a one-off exception for a star — it's a new rule: the trophy goes to whoever actually played.
kyxsan keeps his stickers
The other half of the policy stands: the Major stickers — including the champion sticker — went to kyxsan as the player in the original registration, and the revenue from those sticker sales apparently stays with him too. The outcome is mirror-image fairness: karrigan gets the trophy for the tournament he played, kyxsan gets the stickers and royalties for his place in the registration. kyxsan, as a reminder, has already found a new team in Aurora.
What this changes going forward
Mid-cycle roster moves are the norm in modern CS2 — lineups rarely survive from qualifiers to playoffs unchanged. Now the stand-ins who actually step onto the server are no longer invisible to the awards system — and at the next Major, PGL Singapore in late November, the new rule will apply from day one. The precedent is set, and it was set by a player for whom a "formal substitution" turned into the second title of his career.
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