Changelog

Below is a list of the main changes between previous Roulette Rivals tournaments. Please be aware that the list is not exhaustive, but closer to a collection of the What’s New? pages from the past. All current rules can be found in the Rules and Information categories.

Roulette Rivals 20

Welcome, Welcome!: RR20 is under the motto of approachability to the game of Hitman Roulette. One of the changes made in this name is the reduction of the available map pool from 19 to 11 maps, which can be seen below. All other missions cannot be banned or selected during RR20. It is therefore also not necessary to own access to other locations, most importantly the DLC missions New York and Haven Island.

Swiss Ambush: Due to strong community support, RR20 is not hosted in a Double Elimination format as originally planned, but as a two-stage tournament, consisting of a six-round Elimination Swiss Stage and a Double Elimination Knockout Stage. The full tournament format can be found here.

• In the Elimination Swiss Stage, players who win 4 matches immediately advance to the KO Stage, players who lose 3 matches are immediately eliminated. The first four rounds of Elimination Swiss are played in a First-to-5 (Ft5) format, with the last two rounds being played in a Ft7 format, which is also the format for the KO Stage. The Grand Final is Ft9.
• The KO Stage features all players advanced in a semi-seeded Double Elimination bracket, with the players with the same number of losses in the Elimination Swiss Stage being grouped as same seeds.

Full Control: Tying in with the previous changes, there are no RNG maps in RR20. All maps in the pool are either picked or banned by the players. This also means there are no usual selection restrictions based on previous matches.

The Common Duck: It was discovered that despite it being advertised as such, the In-flu-ential Duck is not time-limited and has therefore been unbanned.
Note: This change was made between the Swiss and KO Stage.

Roulette Rivals 19

Reordering: RR19 is in the Swiss + KO Stage Format, last used in RR17. The full tournament format can be found here.

• The last changes to the Swiss format were felt by many to be an improvement, but due to the Buchholz (BH) score being the most accurate after all rounds have been played, the fairness of the draws was lacking a bit, creating scenarios that were or felt unfair. To remedy this, the Buchholz score returns to being the first tiebreaker, with Map Point Differential being relegated to the second tiebreaker. Buchholz also remains the metric by which all pairings in Swiss rounds after the first are weighted.

Clean House: We have all around overhauled the pages containing the rules and information about RR to improve clarity and readability. A few noteworthy points resulting from this:

• We now explicitly mention the time-limited items that are not allowed to be used in competitions under Rule 2.
• The explicit exception that shooting down the Gondola does not count as a Fall kill for Yuki Yamazaki has been removed; therefore, under current rules for Fall kills, it does now count.
• Due to improvements to the Hokkaido spin algorithm, it now better checks for allowed and disallowed identical spin condition combinations for both targets. Notably, double Explosion is now allowed. Refer to the Hokkaido section for Details.

Consumed Poison for Ken Morgan is banned due to the kill bugging out, similar to those for Silvio Caruso and Carl Ingram.

Roulette Rivals 18

Return of the Brack: RR18 sees a return to a Double Elimination bracket. The full tournament format can be found here. For the first time, the bracket draw of a DE tournament is not fully random, but a generalised version of our seeding system is used. The players with the 16 highest seeds are spread out, therefore ensuring a fairer bracket on the WB and LB side for everyone. All details can be found here.

Objection: The following rule changes and clarifications have been made:

• The Black Streak Suit is now banned.
• Items only obtainable through time-limited DLC are now banned.
• The Boosting rule has been reworded to include pushing 47 upwards with any item, not necessarily particles (therefore now catching the sauce can, which is banned anyway).

2025 Roulette Rivals World Championship

Knockout Punch: The following adjustments have been made for this year's KO stage:

• The KO Stage is now double-elimination, since all other tournaments this year featured a single-elimination KO Stage.
• Match lengths:
  First-to-6: WB Rounds 1-2 & LB Rounds 1-3
  First-to-8: WB Rounds 3-4 & LB Rounds 4-7
  First-to-10: WB Final & LB Final
  First-to-12: Grand Final
• The LB Final now features a map reset, same as the Grand Final, meaning the players are not restricted in their picks and bans from previous rounds.

Roulette Rivals 17

Improving the Formula: The changes below aim to build upon the Swiss format to suit the size of the community better.

• The primary tiebreaker is now Points Differential, switching priority with the Buchholz Score. This change aims to place more importance on a player's personal performance, rather than that of their opponents.
• Forfeit matches where one player was clearly at fault are assigned a score of 0-6. This result is counted towards both players' point differentials.
• Following the first round draw of the Swiss stage, which remains fully random, draws are nonrandom and use a balanced BH system. Essentially, within the same points bracket, the player with the most difficult opponents and with the easiest opponents would be matched up and so on. The intent with this change is for luck to be a smaller factor in Swiss stage performance.
  • For example, imagine that four players have 4 points. Their Buchholz scores are hypothetically 2.9 (A), 2.8 (B), 2.7 (C), and 2.6 (D). The matchups in the next round would be Player A vs D and Player B vs C.
• The Buchholz score calculation is now affected by the activity of previous opponents - their contributions to your BH are weighted based on the total number of rounds that they opt into. For example, if you face an opponent that earns 0pts in R1 and then drops out of the tournament, their effect on your BH score is significantly less than if they earn 0pts in 6 rounds of play.
• The initial draw for the Knockout Stage is now semi-random, similar to how RRWC KO Stages are drawn. The top four players in the Swiss stage are seeded in any of the top 4 slots and so on.

Loud Elim is short for the combination of any loud firearm spin with the No Target KO complication.

Roulette Rivals 16

New RR Format: For the first time, a regular RR features an all-new format, the Swiss Format. Each player is guaranteed to play 6 matches, with the best 16 players advancing to a Single-Elimination KO Stage. For a more thorough explanation of the new format and a lengthy example, visit the Substack (by In4Fun).

• 1st Stage: 6 Rounds Swiss, matches are Bo5
• The best 16 players advance, tiebreakers are Buchholz Score -> Points Differential -> Direct Comparison -> Sonneborn-Berger Score -> Highest Elo
• 2nd Stage: Fully seeded Single-Elimination Knockout (3rd place may be played out or shared by the players)
• KO Matches are First-to-8, the Grand Final is First-to-10

Unique Kills: Four unique kills have been added to the pool of conditions. These new conditions are not exclusive, meaning if a unique condition also counts for other existing kills, that remains the case. For example, the Telescope kill on Silvio Caruso may still be used for regular Firearm kills.

2024 Roulette Rivals World Championship

A Shocking Turn of Events: The Knockout Stage of the World Championship undergoes a major change:

• The Knockout Stage becomes single-elimination: no more LB sweeps.
• RNG maps are hidden and only revealed at match time.
• The required score to win in each round of the Knockout Stage changes as follows:
  Round 1 - First to 8 (1 ban, 2 picks)
  Round 2 - First to 8 (1 ban, 2 picks)
  Round 3 (Quarter-Finals) - First to 10 (2 bans, 2 picks)
  Round 4 (Semi-Finals) - First to 12 (2 bans, 3 picks)
  Round 5 (Grand Final) - First to 14 (2 bans (Ban #2 after 8 map picks), 6 picks, finalists must pick unique maps)
• All bans and picks are repeated in the ABBA format.

A Morale Boost: Particle Boosts and Cover Aims stay banned, but all other boosts are allowed.

Loud Elim is short for the combination of any loud firearm spin with the No Target KO complication. Sierra’s two new kills must be performed while she’s still in her car.

Roulette Rivals 15

Stuck in a Wall?: All types of boosting are disallowed. This includes cover aims, particle boosts & others.

From Flames to Ka-boom: The Molotov gets back some purpose by also being allowed for Impact Explosive (Weapon) kills. This hopefully reduces issues with ragdolls.

Roulette Rivals 14

Forgotten Me?: Last RR, we updated the structure for the LB Final and Grand Final; now the WB Final follows suit: it becomes a first-to-eight (Ft8) match, with both players picking two maps each (alongside their one ban).

Freedom At Last: Gameplay Rule 11, which prohibited Particle Boosting, is experimentally removed. All kinds of boosts are now permitted.

Roulette Rivals 13

Restructuring the Final Rounds: We're updating the structure for the LB Finals and Grand Finals as follows:

• LB Finals are first-to-eight (Ft8) matches with both players picking two maps each (alongside their one ban).
• Grand Finals are first-to-ten (Ft10) matches with full picks and bans, as in previous tournaments.

Extinguishing the Molotov's Flame: We've updated the ruling on the Molotov Cocktail (again). Starting with RR13, using the Molotov Cocktail no longer counts for Fire kills.

A Global Innovation: Any method of killing Sierra Knox while she is in her car (such as shooting it or placing a remote explosive on it) now counts as "Explosion (Accident)" instead of "Sniper Rifle".

Making an Explosive Impact: For RR13, we are trialing splitting out "Explosive (Weapon)" kills into two variants: Remote Explosive (Weapon) and Impact Explosive (Weapon). If a player receives the "Impact Explosive (Weapon)" condition, it is forbidden to use a secondary explosive to detonate the impact explosive.  In other words, players cannot place a breaching charge next to a bottle of Nitroglycerin.  Players are permitted to shoot the impact explosive with a firearm.

• It is not possible to receive both "Remote Explosive (Weapon)" and "Impact Explosive (Weapon)" in the same spin.

Hitman Adsolution™: We're ending Frote's mid-spin ad breaks. Rule 18 is added to the General Rules: Participants are responsible for not having ads play during a match. This can be done by either using an alternate account, multicasting your gameplay to a second stream provider, or playing ads in between maps.

2023 Roulette Rivals World Championship

So, What *Exactly* is Loading Time?: We're updating the definition of "Loading Time" as it pertains to photo finishes. The new definition reads:

• "Loading time" is defined by the time a participant is waiting for the game to load after pressing "Play" or "Restart Mission", which is determined by the "Loading..." indicator in the bottom-right being fully shown.  Time spent planning or in the pause menu (but not waiting for the mission to restart) does not count as loading time.
• In case that definition isn't completely clear, here's a breakdown of some scenarios and whether or not they counted as loading time before compared to now:
  • *We determined that the last scenario is extremely rare. As a result, it will continue to fall into the "bad luck" category to balance the manual calculation efforts required by Roulette Admins during a photo finish situation while also accounting for as many consistent loading situations as possible.

Opening / Closing the Window: We're altering the photo finish window to now be dynamic, dependent on the time it takes both players to complete the spin:

• Assuming both players finish the spin without game crashes, the following three scenarios are possible:
  Spin lasts under 10 minutes: photo finish window of 30 seconds
  Spin lasts between 10 and 20 minutes: photo finish window of 45 seconds
  Spin lasts 20 minutes or longer: photo finish window of 60 seconds
• If a player experiences a game crash, the window will switch to a static 3-minute photo finish window like before.

Roulette Rivals 12

Out With The Old, In With The New: Now that we've had a couple of tournaments to view and analyze the impact of "Thrown/Melee" melee weapon kills and weapon eliminations, we've noticed that there are two main opinions about these new kills:

• Those who like weapon eliminations and "Melee" weapon kills primarily like them as it forces the target to be up and moving, potentially disrupting common/"meta" isolation techniques.
• Those who dislike weapon eliminations dislike them primarily due to some uncertainty that could be introduced outside of the player's control (missing prompts, etc).

To solve this, we're opting to make the following changes:

Part of a Paris spin with the new “No Target Pacification” complication.

• Out With The Old: We're removing weapon eliminations, as well as the chance of receiving a Thrown/Melee variant of a melee weapon kill.
• In With The New: We're adding a new complication (which is brand-new to roulette as a whole) called "No Target KO". This complication simply dictates that your target cannot be knocked out in any way before killing them. The chance of receiving this new complication will be similar to the current odds of receiving a Weapon Elimination or Melee/Thrown kill condition to maintain consistency.

We believe this solves the problem of uncertainty while still allowing for more live kills.

• TL;DR: Weapon Eliminations and Melee/Thrown kills are gone, while a "No Target KO" complication is created, which can be added to 0 or more targets per spin.

Modified Molotov, Mk III: A small change, but a change nonetheless. When using the Molotov Cocktail in combination with an explosive to perform a remote fire kill, Roulette Admins will now always treat the kill as if the Molotov Cocktail was the primary weapon. This is due to the Molotov Cocktail being able to show "Explosion Kill" in some cases, making it hard to determine which item actually caused the kill. This change would not take effect if the Molotov Cocktail triggered an accident kill (such as via a gas canister or propane flask), resulting in "Accident Kill" appearing in the performance HUD display.

Roulette Rivals 11

Weapon Eliminations: Pistol and SMG Elimination are combined into a single condition, called "Weapon Elimination". This means the player can choose to use a Pistol or SMG for this condition, while the Loud or Silent modifier remains unchanged.

Crash Rule: The crash rule is modified in the following way (new text underlined):

• Only if it is obvious that the crash would have made an impact on the overall outcome of the map, or if the crash happened in the first 60 seconds, the map will be respun. These respins are limited to 1 per person, per match. In any other case, the photofinish window will be extended to 3 minutes. Crash time counts as loading time.

Roulette Rivals 10

Cross-Platform: RR10 sees the combination of the formerly separated PC and Console brackets. Experience from 3 RRWCs where this was already done and a positive survey feedback reinforced this decision.

Points Per Match / Map Length: First-to-6 matches are overwhelmingly preferred over first-to-4, as more maps result in a fairer result. Therefore, we are expanding first-to-6 matches to all rounds before the Grand Final. To combat the increasing match length that would come with this change, especially in earlier matches, we are reducing the time limit on each map to 30 minutes from 47.

New Kill Conditions: We are experimentally adding new kill methods to the pool of conditions.

• Weapon Eliminations require eliminating a target using the “Eliminate” prompt while holding a firearm. In detail, these are called “Pistol Elimination” & “SMG Elimination”, both with an additional modifier of either having to use a loud weapon, a silent one, or leaving the choice to the player.
• Melee kills will be a new modifier added to existing melee weapons. Kills with these weapons now must be done either from a melee range, thrown onto the target, or leaving the choice to the player.

Gameplay-Specific Rules: Rule 19 has been added: Eliminating a target via "Pistol Elimination" using a Sieker 1 is prohibited. Example (video credit: MrMike)

2022 Roulette Rivals World Championship

Points Per Match: The upcoming World Championship is using the following match structure:

• Group Stage: All maps are played in group stage matches. (Play all 3)
• Knockout Stage:
  Before LB Final: First-to-6
  LB Final: First-to-8
  Grand Final: First-to-10

General Rules: The following rule is added:

• 5. Upon knowing your opponent, you are required to schedule your next match within 48 hours. This does not apply to group stage matches (i.e. RRWC).
  • This does not mean that you must play your next match within 48 hours.  It simply means that your next match must be in the schedule within 48 hours of knowing your next opponent.

Gameplay-Specific Rules: Updated Rule #1, removing the restriction on the Polar Survival Suit: it can now be used on all maps.

After the October 6th 2022 patch, kills with the Molotov Cocktail were no longer accidents, resulting in the ban of Fire kills for all targets without a natural accident opportunity.

Roulette Rivals 9

Points Per Match: The match structure for each round of the two brackets is specified as follows:

• PC Bracket (34 players):
  WB Rounds 1-3 & LB Rounds 1-4: First-to-3
  WB Rounds 4-6 & LB Rounds 5-9: First-to-6
  Grand Final: First-to-8
• Console Bracket (20 players):
  WB Rounds 1-2 & LB Rounds 1-2: First-to-3
  WB Rounds 3-5 & LB Rounds 3-7: First-to-6
  Grand Final: First-to-8

Gameplay-Specific Rules: The following changes are made to the Gameplay-Specific Rules: 

• Rule #18 is added: Using a tranquilizer dart to produce fire from a Molotov Cocktail (thus removing the explosion aspect) is prohibited. Example (video credit: BluntsNBeatz)
• Fire and Consumed Poison have been added to the list of potential remote kill options.

New York (Golden Handshake) / Dartmoor (Death In The Family) Changes: New York and Dartmoor have returned to the RNG / decider pool in all rounds. Furthermore, New York and Dartmoor spins will no longer specify methods for completing the additional objective.

Roulette Rivals 8

Points Per Match: The match structure for each round of the two brackets is specified as follows:

• PC Bracket (33 players):
  WB Rounds 1-3 & LB Rounds 1-4: First-to-3
  WB Rounds 4-6 & LB Rounds 5-9: First-to-6
  Grand Final: First-to-8
• Console Bracket (28 players):
  WB Rounds 1-2 & LB Rounds 1-3: First-to-3
  WB Rounds 3-5 & LB Rounds 4-8: First-to-6
  Grand Final: First-to-8

RNG / Decider Maps: RNG / decider maps are now revealed in #matchups upon scheduling, and will not be reshuffled if a match needs to be rescheduled. We understand that some viewers may not wish to know the maps ahead of time, so RNG / decider maps will not be displayed on HITMAPS.com or the in-stream overlay. Additionally, the time limit for deciders has been removed.  In other words, deciders can no longer end in a 0-0 draw.

General Rules: The following changes are made to the General Rules: 

• Section a. is added to Rule #5: If you are not live and ready at your scheduled match time, a fifteen (15) minute countdown will begin. Not showing up beyond those fifteen (15) minutes will result in a forfeit loss. Exception: If it is your first offense, you notify a match admin within twenty-four (24) hours of the original match time, and provide a reason for not showing up that is deemed acceptable by the admins, you will be permitted to reschedule your match. If it is your second offense, you will be disqualified from the tournament.
• Rule #11 is updated: Game crashes: Only if it is obvious that the crash would have made an impact on the overall outcome of the map, the map will be respun. These respins are limited to 1 per person, per match.
  • Admin note: We believed that too many maps were being re-spun due to the old verbiage (which mandated a respin if the match admin could not determine whether or not the crash had an impact). This new verbiage only allows a match admin to restart if the outcome would be affected. We also reduced the number of respins from 1 per person, per map to 1 per person, per match.
• Rule #12 is updated: Intentionally causing an infinite loop glitch to freeze an NPC in place is not allowed. Examples of this would include (but are not limited to) infinite illegal weapon pickups, infinite snail pickups, and infinite audio distraction lures. Note: Enforcement of this rule is up to admin discretion. If the glitch was done unintentionally and did not give the player an obvious advantage, then it is okay and the player does not have to restart.

Gameplay-Specific Rules: The following changes are made to the Gameplay-Specific Rules: 

• Rule #15 is added: Use of the large item concealment glitch is prohibited. Example (video credit: clckr)
• Rule #16 is added: Placing a poison vial on top of (or in place of) a glass/cup/beverage vessel, causing the target to consume the poison directly is prohibited. Example (video credit: Agent 420)
• Rule #17 is added: Causing a NPC to pick up a micro taser is prohibited, as they are not intended to pick them up by design. The only exception is placing a micro taser in a mailbox in Whittleton Creek to be picked up by an NPC. Example (video credit: Mando)

New York (Golden Handshake) / Dartmoor (Death In The Family) Changes: The two one-target maps are undergoing the following changes for RR8:

• New York and Dartmoor return to the RNG / decider pool, starting in the following rounds:
  PC: WB Round 4 / LB Round 5
  Console: WB Round 3 / LB Round 4
• New York and Dartmoor spins now specify the method of collecting the data on the map (Data Disks / Core in New York, Case File / Tokens in Dartmoor).
  • Both a collection method restriction and a disguise restriction will be provided.  You must collect the data and exit with it to complete the spin.
  • The disguise must be worn when collecting each disk / token, or when collecting the core / case file.  Once the data has been collected, you may change disguise and continue to carry the data (this note is aimed specifically at the data core in New York).

Incinerators: Use of an incinerator now counts for Fire kills.