Update (10/19): ELEAGUE provided the following comment on the situation.

"Many factors are considered when inviting teams to compete, including the qualifications of the teams competing, the scheduling/timeline leading up to the event, passport/visa availability, et cetera," ELEAGUE said. "We invited the teams that best met each of those criteria, and we are confident the Asia region will be well represented in the Asia Minor Championship."

Original Story: The next CS:GO Major was recently announced, causing some excitement as the upcoming season is finally set in stone. But not everyone was celebrating considering that the Asia Minor Championship is set to be an invite-only event, a first since the Minors were introduced in late 2015.

Members of the CS:GO community voiced their concerns over the situation, including an open letter addressed to Valve and ELEAGUE that was signed by the owners of JYP Gaming, Recca Esports and was endorsed by 5POWER Esports Club, Mineski and many more.

The crux of the issue stems from the nature of Minor-Major system put in place by Valve and how an invite-only event goes against that spirit. It's a system completely open by design, with the only barrier to entry being a team's skill and their commitment to scheduled matches times. But with an invite-only Minor, it effectively closes off an entry point to one of CS:GO's biggest events of the year from potentially one of the game's biggest communities in Asia.

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One of the people directly affected by the Minor's format was CS 1.6 legend Harley "dsn" Örwall, who is the coach of Singaporean team B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape.

"I think running an invite-only tournament in Asia, and not in any other region, is inconsistent and flat-out bad," dsn said in an email statement to theScore esports.

"In my opinion, Majors should be open, as they have historically been. If the tournament is well-planned, I really see no valid point for making any stage of the circuit an invite-only event."

With the Asia Minor being invite-only, this also highlights another issue according to dsn. The Minors Championships represent a vast region of countries and players, yet the Asia Minor only includes a handful of them. As the aforementioned open letter points out, none of which are from South Asia, the Middle Eastern or Southeast Asia.

"Inviting teams from four countries and calling it "Asia Minor" is pretty much equivalent to solely inviting teams from the Nordic countries and calling it "Europe Minor"," dsn said.

"Being an event sponsored by Valve, I’m pretty sure it’s in their best interest to engage teams and communities from as many countries as possible. Just because you and I might not be able to name teams from over 40 Asian countries does not mean that they don’t exist. I think that the road to the Major should be consistent regardless of which continent you are hailing from."

At the end of the day the Major circuit is about finding the best team in the world, with region or country of origin being secondary. An invite-only event theoretically doesn't go against, if indeed the direct invitees have earned it based on past performances, but dsn takes issue with ELEAGUE's selection process.

"ELEAGUE told me that they based their invites on which teams they thought were the strongest in the region. How they actually rated the different teams and which criteria they used in their model I have no idea about," he said.

"We are ranked higher than three of the invited teams on HLTV.org’s ranking, therefore I think we belong in the "Asia Minor," but there are other teams with a higher ranking than some of the teams that didn't make the cut, too."

For better or worse, many tournament organizers make use of HLTV's global ranking system as justification for seeding priority or even direct invite selection. And while it's sometimes the subject of discussion and criticism, it's inner processes (short of actual formulas) is pretty transparent and public. The same cannot be said about ELEAGUE's selection.

dsn clearly has a vested interest in the Asia Minor, being the coach of a Singaporean team, but he says the root of his frustration stems from the event's format.

"All in all, I’m certainly more upset about the whole format than about us not being invited," he said.