In yet another spotlight being shined on the flaws of the Valve Ranking System, Lynn Vision have brought up a new issue regarding Major qualifier slots for the Asia region and its 3 sub-regions.

With the PGL Astana Asian Closed Qualifier underway, they made a tweet to expose a rule where Asia has four MRQ slots but only three subregions: China, West Asia, and Oceania, with the final slot going to the sub-region of the 2nd best team in Asia.

The MongolZ hold strong at #1 and are already seeded to head directly to the Major, bypassing the MRQ. Liquid are currently #2, but with the rumors of siuhy replacing jks, they’d lose their Asia status.

After this tweet, they were set to play against Rare Atom in the Astana qualifier, but they forfeited the match. The justification was that they weren’t confident they would hold that #2 Asia rank against other Asian opposition and that Rare Atom would be more capable of staying on top.

We can’t help but notice these constant holes in the VRS, and while the system could be airtight in the future, it’s been an ugly process so far. Striker from HLTV put it well: “this is all kinds of f–cked up.”

It’s rather funny that Valve implemented this system with somewhat obvious problems like forfeits not affecting a team’s ranking (aka The FIFA Rule) or changes to standings only being added after a tournament ends. But as more defects are seen, one can’t help but feel bad for these teams.

Every tournament seems to be a new game of roulette for which the team hits a new artificial barrier implemented by Valve.

Looking into the future for the impact of this forfeit, there are only two events for Rare Atom remaining until the path to the Lone Star State begins in mid-May with MRQs, PGL Bucharest, and MESA Pro Series Spring.

If Rare Atom crash in Romania and MESA, they may miss out on the #2 ranking, permitting FlyQuest to show up in IEM Melbourne.

Who are we kidding? They’re dreadful, but it is their home crowd.