Rules, terms & conditions

Warning : U2WR 2008/2009 season is the launching season. The following rules may suffer from numerous changes, alterations or rectifications in order to stick as much as possible to the reality of an official international ranking of gamers. Besides, many points in this page explain how we will deal with the results of a competition when information is missing. We hope that we will resort to these particular rules as little as possible and we will work together with the organizers of competitions so that these cases remain exceptional.

Ultimate WorldWide Ranking aims at establishing a ranking of gamers, teams and gaming organizations worldwide taking part in competitions which are updated every year.

1/ Seasons

U2WR seasons follow the course of seasons as they appear on the ESWC calendar. For the current year (2008-2009), the season has begun on August, 27 at 00:00 (GMT). After the ESWC grand final of next June, the ranking will be reset and a new season will begin.

2/ Matches

a - Every match and competition worldwide is bound to be listed and used in the ranking in so far as the scores are both accessible and verifiable.

b- A match is taken into account in its entirety, regardless of the number of rounds won by each gamer. A "match" entity consists of one or more rounds which can lead to a single rating change.

3/ Competitor

a - Gamers, teams and gaming organizations worldwide are bound to be listed in the ranking in so far as their respective contact details are both accessible and verifiable.

b - The term "competitor" equally refers to a team or a gamer in the following rules.

c - Shall be considered a "gaming organization" entity, any organised group identified as the owner of one or more teams or gamers, managing a budget associated to its competitors and conveying an image of "multigaming organization".

d - Shall be considered a "gamer" entity, any physical person associated or not with a gaming organization. He/She is given the ranking of a gamer. In case of gaming organization changing, the gamer keeps his/her position in the ranking.

e - Shall be considered a "team" entity, any group of "gamers" associated or not with a gaming organization. If the team does not belong to any gaming organization, it is itself considered as such. When the ranking of gaming organizations is put online, only the organizations owning at least two teams will be taken into account.

f - In case of changes within the team, the gaming organization keeps the ranking of its team but the gamers lose the ranking in question.
Team.de (Germany) and Team.dk (Denmark) are two accurate examples of gaming organizations which own several teams evolving on the same game and differentiated by their nationality. The gaming organization keeps the rating of the former team if the gamers who leave have the same nationality as their substitutes. If one of the substitutes has a different nationality from the one of the gamers leaving, the team which has just been set up shall not be considered the same as before and therefore shall not keep the rating of the previous entity.

g - If gamers leave a gaming organization to join another, the team they are joining get the ranking of the gaming organization. If the arrival organization in question does not have any ranking, the rating of the team becomes the initial rating of their ranking i.e 1500 pts.

h - A gaming organization that stops playing a game still keeps the ranking of its former teams until the end of the season.

i - Gamers, teams, gaming organizations are ranked in a decreasing order according to the value of their respective "rating". Gamers begin the season with a rating of 1500pts (initial value), a rating which will evolve through the season according to the matches played by the competitors.

4/ Rating

a - All the competitions do not provoke the same changes in the ranking. Thus, an online regional competition without selections will produce a lesser change in points than an offline international competition with selections. (This variation is embodied by the "k" value below, in the list of competitions and their respective importance.)

b- Each match played by a competitor leads to a change of his/her rating and therefore a change of his/her ranking by means of the ELO system illustrated here:

Let R be the rating of a team before its match
Let R' be the rating of a team after its match
Let S be the score of the studied team (1 for a win, 0 for a loss)
Let K be a constant giving the maximal value of the increase or the decrease in points of the competitors (variable according to the competition)
Let E be the expected score of the match calculated according to the rank of the gamer and his/her opponent.

We have: R '= R + K x (S - E)

Therefore, we get the expected score E for A and B gamers below:
E_A = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ( (R_B - R_A) / 400 ) )
E_B = 1 / (1 + 10 ^ ( (R_A - R_B) / 400 ) )
E_A + E_B = 1

E_A and E_B being the expected scores for A and B gamers; R_A and R_B being their respective rating before the match.

In broad outline, competitions are classified in five categories corresponding to the value given to K in the formula which allows to establish the ranking:
Online regional competition: K 10
Online national competition, offline regional competition: K 20
Online international competition, offline national competition: K 30
Offline international competition, national competition of the highest importance: K 40
Offline international competition of the highest importance: K 50
An online competition cannot exceed K 30

c - If a competition includes online qualifications and then an offline final, two different "k" values may be attributed to the stages of this competition. The criteria used to classify the competitions shall be refined for 2009/2010 season.

d - If an offline competition involves pool phases, ratings shall be frozen during these pool phases and liable to changes again as soon as the phases end. We shall implement the changes resulting from the matches played during the pool phases only when these phases are over and before taking into account the matches of the next stage. Each match shall be reckoned as if the team had kept its rating after each pool match.

e - Competitions involving several gamers per match (as it is the case particularly in the game races) shall be taken into account as if each gamer had played every other participant once (single round-robin system).

Example: Let's take four gamers for a racing car: Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, Player 4 being the order at finishing line.
Shall be taken into account the following matches:
P1 vs. P2
P2 vs. P3
P3 vs. P4
P1 vs. P4
P2 vs. P4
P1 vs. P3
For each match, the player who ranked before his/her opponent shall be considered the winner of the match.

f - If two competitions take place on the same day and gamers play successively matches of both competitions, we shall deal with the results in two different ways:
- either the exact time of each match is available and verifiable (as well as the precise time zone of the place of the event), in that case the matches will be captured one after the other according to the time of play (from the 2009/2010 season)
- or the exact time of each match is not available and verifiable, in this case the matches will be entirely captured by competition, starting with the competition with the smallest “K” value as if all the competitions had taken place one after the other. If two competitions have the same “K” value, competitions will be captured in the following order:
National competition > continental competition > world competition
If this criterium is not enough, we will first capture online competitions, then offline competitions. If the criterium is still not enough, we will rank competitions according to the value of prizes, beginning by the competition which offers the smallest prizes. We shall particularly use this rule during the 2008/2009 beta season
A match which is not played by a competitor during "clan wars" does not lead to any change of rating.
A match which is not played by a gamer during a competition where he/she has still played the previous matches is considered a loss.

5/ Particular cases

a - Even if we are going to hold systematical inquiries to determine the exact identity of a gamer in a competition, it is not uncommon that gamers change pseudonym so often that they cannot be recognized. If a gamer deliberately plays under a pseudonym which is different from the one he/she usually uses, his/her results shall be taken into account as if he/she were a different gamer, under his/her new pseudonym. No subsequent modification will be allowed.

b - As things stand at present in esport, many results of competitions are not available for consultation, and when they are, information which is fundamental to establish a ranking is sometimes missing. That is why we will pay a careful attention to all the information we collect or receive. For this launching year, if we think that the available information concerning the preliminary matches of a competition is not reliable enough, we may only take into account the information about the final stage of the competition in question. Also, if we hope to open up the ranking to all the competitions across the world, be they big or small, offline or online, we reserve ourself the right not to deal with the matches of a competition which information is hard to verify.

c - An information which is difficult to verify, a match taking place under rules that are completely different from the rules commonly admitted for a game, are the only two criteria which may lead us to refuse considering a competition. Therefore, leagues or competitions, even if they are international, taking place in a closed “circuit” with teams that never play in other competitions than these leagues, shall not be integrated into the ranking.
Minor variations in a game mode, particularly in DotA and Quake, do not question the fact that we integrate the results of a competition into the ranking.

d - Gamers, teams, gaming organizations have access to information which concerns them and they can ask for modification at any time. Afterwards, this information will be associated to a user account allowing the gaming organization itself to proceed to modifications.

e - Any cheating or offence to the rules pointed out by the organizers of a competition will be punished by the loss of each match he/she has played during this competition and by the affixing of the word [CHEATER] in front of the pseudonym or the name of the incriminated team until the end of the season.

6/ Terms of use

Using the name U2WR and the logos to underline the fact that the results of a competition will appear in the ranking is allowed without any particular restriction.

Using the name U2WR and the logos to deal with sports information in sites of news,teams or competitions is allowed without any particular restriction.

Nonetheless, the ranking, the calculations, the ratings, the logos and the name U2WR (Ultimate WorldWide Ranking) remain the property of our organization and any other use altogether requires a permission. For any authorization, please send an email to contact@u2wr.com