How CSL works

Four things stand between a new account and a game. They only have to be done once.

1. 1Sign in

   Sign in with Steam. Your Steam account is your CSL identity.

2. 2Pick a name

   Claim a username. It is yours permanently and can be changed once every 30 days.

3. 3Accept the rules

   Read and accept the CSL regulations. Nothing else opens until you do.

4. 4Link Discord

   Link Discord from your CSL profile, then verify in Discord to unlock the channels.

CSL signs you in with Steam, not Discord, because Steam is what identifies you in the game itself. Link Discord from your CSL profile. The link is saved in Atlas too, and an existing Atlas link is picked up when you sign in. Discord is required so the league can grant roles, run match voice channels and reach you when something needs an answer. After linking, press Verify in the Discord.

This league is currently set to require at least 1,000 hours of tracked Rust playtime before you can create or join a team, queue or play in a tournament. Unranked hub games (VERIFIED off) are the exception. Starters and substitutes must meet the requirement. Playtime is read from BattleMetrics. If your hours are missing or incorrect and you already meet the requirement, play actively on an Atlas server for 10 minutes: gather stone and wood or kill boars, then try again. If your hours still haven't updated, open a support ticket in Discord.

CSL is played by clans, so almost everything happens through a team. You can belong to one team per format — a Team clan and a 2v2 duo at the same time is fine, two Team clans is not.

There are three positions on a roster, and they decide who can do what:

• Founder — owns the team. One per team. Cash prizes are credited to the founder.
• Scrim leader — up to 4 per team. Can do everything match-related the founder can.
• Player — plays. Cannot queue or report.

Only a founder or a scrim leader can put the team into a queue, accept a match, pick the lineup, request a substitution or dispute a result. If you are waiting around for a game and nothing is happening, it is usually because nobody with those rights has queued.

There is no fixed schedule. A captain queues whenever the team is ready, and the league pairs them with another team that is searching at the same time.

1. 1Search

   A captain queues the lineup.

2. 2Match found

   Open the match page and join its host region within the 15-minute ready window.

3. 3Ready up

   All starters connect to the assigned server, then both captains accept on the website.

4. 4Lineup locked

   The roster is frozen and the match lobby opens.

5. 5Result

   The score is recorded and both captains report it. Agreement makes it official immediately; otherwise the recorded score stands after 5 minutes, and either captain can dispute it in that window.

Pairing starts by looking for opponents within 150 rating of your team and widens by 75 for every minute you keep searching, up to 600. A quiet night means a longer search and eventually a wider spread of opponent, not no game at all.

Your first 3 matches against the same opponent in 14 hours count in full. The next ones count for less — 50%, then 20%, then 10% of the ELO — and after 6 matches the next one is a friendly: no clan ELO, no win-loss record and no Impact for anyone in it. You are not stopped from playing them — the queue will still pair you if there is nobody else about — but two clans taking turns beating each other gains them nothing, which is the point. The allowance frees up as those matches age past the 14-hour window, and the queue always prefers to give you a rated opponent when one is searching.

The ready check is the part people lose games to

When a match is found, both captains have 15 minutes to connect all starters to the assigned host region and accept on the website. Use the match page's connect command and switch to its EU or NA hub before readying up. Declining a found match or missing its ready check gives the team and the captain who started the search an escalating queue ban: 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, then 24 hours. Changing captain does not remove the team's ban. Strikes clear after 48 hours without another dodge.

Once both sides accept, the lineup is frozen and the match lobby opens. Stay connected and enter the assigned lobby. You have 10 minutes to actually turn up before an absence starts counting against you.

Each format has its own map, size and win condition, fixed when the match is created so that later tuning can never change a game already being played.

Note the difference in how the two are won. Team matches at 7v7–10v10 need a two-round margin, so a match can pass its target and keep going at 10-9; 5v5 and 6v6, and 2v2, end the moment a side reaches its target. All Team sizes share one clan and one ELO.

The legacy 2v2 clan queue on the website is closed. You can still enter duo tournaments, and the hub's separate RANKED queue offers 2v2 alongside its other sizes. Hub Ranked uses its own player ELO standings. The 2v2 rules above describe the tournament format.

Substitutes sit on the locked roster and can be swapped in between rounds by a captain. A sub has to play at least 3 rounds before the match counts towards their personal record, so a one-round cameo cannot claim a win.

If something goes wrong, the result can be disputed for 5 minutes after the match ends, by a founder or scrim leader, with a written reason. After that it is final and has to go to staff in Discord.

Tournaments are scheduled events with a bracket and, often, a prize pot. A founder or scrim leader signs the team up from the tournament page. Everything then hangs off the advertised start time:

The bracket is drawn privately and published at the draw, so nobody can see the shape of the event while registration is still open. Where the number of teams is not a clean power of two, some sides get a first-round bye.

Check-in is per round, not once for the event. The first round allows 15 minutes for lineup check-in, and later rounds allow 10 minutes. Match Found then allows 5 minutes to ready up on the website. Each round opens its own window and your captain has to check the lineup in for that fixture. If one team checks in and the other does not, the one that did goes through. If neither does, the higher seed advances.

A single-elimination draw sends you home on your first loss, and adds a third-place match where the field is big enough. A double-elimination draw gives every team two lives: lose once and you drop into the lower bracket and can still win the whole thing. On the bracket page, hovering a team shows the route it takes from there, including where it would drop to if it lost.

Where a tournament carries cash, the prize is credited to the team founder as recorded when the result was finalised, and it is not transferable. Prize money is held for a period before it can be drawn, the founder has to complete eligibility verification first, and payouts are arranged with staff through a Discord ticket.

Those rules are a legal policy rather than a game rule, and the authoritative version — including the holding period, the minimum you can withdraw and the country and age requirements — lives on the cash prize policy page. Read it before you count on a payout. Your own balance and its status are on your prizes page.

Two separate things are ranked, and confusing them is the most common misunderstanding on the site.

• Your clan has a team rating used to pair you with fair opponents and to order the ladder. Every team starts at 1000.
• You have a personal rating built from how you actually play, not just whether the team won. Your CSR is your position on this season's player ladder. It covers every format, and it resets when a season opens: anyone who has placed before starts the new season at Wood, and the podium is earned again from matches played since then. CSR #1 is the best player this season.

Both ratings pay a performance bonus. For your clan it is the scoreline: winning a sweep moves your ELO up to 15% more than winning the same match on the minimum lead, and being swept costs you the same extra. It is deliberately small — who won is the signal, and the margin only says how comfortably. It also cannot rescue a mismatch: beating a far weaker clan still pays less than a close fight, however one-sided the score.

For you it is the scoreboard. Your share of your clan's swing is set by your per-round kills, assists and damage measured both against your own side and against everyone in the match, so carrying a losing team is worth more than coasting on a winning one. A standout game takes up to 150% of the clan's movement, and a strong game in a defeat softens the drop — but a loss always costs you rating. There is no scoreboard to read in a match decided by a referee rather than won on the server, so those rate nobody.

Your CSR follows you into the game: the server labels you as [#42] Name when you connect, or [Unranked] Name until you have played enough to be placed. The tag is applied as you join, so a rank that changes mid-session shows up the next time you connect.

Badges are lifetime career challenges that tier up as you play — combat, precision, teamplay and service — and you can showcase your best on your profile.

One of them you earn outside the scoreboard. CSL clips with Medal, our clip partner, so anything you record from a scrim goes through the League’s clip programme. Paste the Medal link on the match page and it lands on the League highlights feed, pays 25 XP and counts toward Clipper. You can add 3 clips per match, within 48 hours of it ending, and only for matches you actually played in. Medal links only — that is the partnership. Staff can take a clip down, which takes the XP with it.

This is separate from disputing a result. If a scoreline is wrong, the proof you attach to a dispute can come from anywhere — a screenshot, any recorder, the match demo. You will never lose a game you won over which capture tool you happened to be running.

• Eliminator
• Marksman
• Devastator
• Executioner
• Lifeline
• Wingman
• Sentinel
• Sharpshooter

The short version: play fair, field the people you said you would field, and turn up when you have queued. Cheating, exploiting bugs and unauthorised third-party software are prohibited, and referees and casters must be allowed to observe a match. Sanctions run from a warning through to forfeiting a game and disqualification. Bans stop you queueing and can put a pending prize under review.

Entering a tournament also means agreeing to PC screening. We use Echo.ac, and you can be asked to screen at any point — before a match, between maps, straight after one, or once an event is over — with no notice and no reason given. Refusing, stalling past the deadline you are given, or tampering with anything is treated as if cheat software had been found: you are disqualified and banned, and your team is out of that competition.

The full and binding version is in the CSL regulations, which you have already accepted if you can read the rest of the site. If you are stuck, something looks wrong with a result, or you need a human, open a ticket in the Discord.