https://www.cybersport.ru/dota-2/articles/bany-igrokov-i-spornye-invaity-pervye-problemy-sezona-dota-pro-circuit-2021

The Dota Pro Circuit 2023 season announcement was not a gift at all… Valve said last year that the season would start on January 18, but did not provide any further details. Some of the professional players and insiders of the esports community probably knew in advance about the dates of the qualifiers, but for most ordinary gamers, they came as a surprise. Valve’s more detailed plans for the season told in the morning of January 1, and the first matches of the qualifiers began on the 5th. Instead of resting on New Year’s holidays, players and clubs were forced to urgently assemble lineups, deal with reshuffles, agree on contracts and transfers.

Some gamers flew to resorts in warm countries for the holidays, celebrating the New Year under the palm trees by the pool is a common practice among cybersportsmen. After the announcement, the players had to quickly return home, cancel Christmas dinners with their families and sit down to train with new teammates, because there was practically no time to play. At the same time, we recall that during the celebration of the Chinese New Year, Valve promised to take an official break from the season.

Due to the tight deadlines, some professional players alike did not have time to collect the compositions to participate in the qualifiers. Among them Roman RAMZES666 Kushnarev, Vladimir No.[o]ne Minenko, Pavel 9pasha Khvastunov, Said Samail SumaiL Hassan and others. Now they are most likely will miss the first half of the seasonwhich means that their chances of getting to The International 10 will be drastically reduced. It remains to be seen what prevented Valve from making an announcement with all the dates and format of the season at least a couple of months earlier, so that the players had a little more time to prepare.

Valve ditches open qualifiers for first divisions… In most regions (except North America), the organizers issued invites to the teams – this is how they recruited participants first divisions and closed qualifications… Although open qualifiers were held, they gave the winners the right to compete only in the second division. That is, all young teams and mixes that did not receive invitations to qualification lost even a theoretical chance to compete for DPC points in the first half of the season. To do this, they had to first get into the second division, and then play a full cycle in it…

The organizers of regional leagues also approached the issuance of invites very “creatively”. Special many questions in the community prompted some teams from the CIS… Earlier in the announcement, Valve clearly stated that it will not use last season’s DPC points to issue invites. The ESL administration did their own thing and handed out invitations to the DPC season based on some secret rating, which they refused to show publicly. ESL really has your team rating on Dota 2, but some of the participants are simply absent.

It is not yet clear on what principle the teams that replaced most of the roster received invites to the Decider Tournament for the CIS (Winstrike Team, EXTREMUM, Team empire, B8 Esports) or have not played a single official match (NoTechies, HellRaisers, NoPangolier). IN Gambit Esports there were only three players in general when the team received an invitation to the qualifier. Only the manager spoke publicly about the non-transparent distribution of invites Cascade Esports, but him open letter did not last long in the community.

The qualifiers caused confusion among spectators and problems for teams. Before the start of the season, Valve distributed the regions among six tournament operators. So, DreamHack is responsible for Europe, ESL – for the CIS, Perfect World – for China, Beyond the Summit – for North America, OGA – for South America, and PGL – for Southeast Asia. All organizers announced the participants at different times and on different platforms. Some published the lists of teams on official websites, others made announcements on Twitter or Weibo, etc. It was not easy for an outside viewer to navigate on which streams to look for certain matches.

Registration on the ESL tournament platform caused great difficulties for the teams from the CIS. 160 teams planned to participate in the first open qualifiers, but about 50 teams dropped out even before the start. One of the reasons was that the names of many teams on the ESL website did not coincide with their names on the official Dota 2 website. For example, Kasatiki Egor Ark Zhabotinsky could not prove to the judges that they are Kasatiki, and the managers of Cascade Esports accidentally wrote the name of their team with the Russian letter “C”. After that, the Dota 2 Arena commentator VeRsuta Zurabyan statedthat the organizers should have simplified the registration rules, since “Dota 2 players are far from being the smartest guys.” Manager Team Spirit Dmitry Korb3n Belov, in turn, was surprised why the ESL judges did not translate all the rules into Russian, because the company is responsible for the qualifications specifically for the CIS.

Organizational problems continued during the closed qualifiers. For example, the first matches in Southeast Asia started without official English-language and Russian-language streams. By words Ben’s analyst Noxville Stinuizen, some tournament operators generally refused to cooperate with studios broadcasting on “unpopular“ languages ​​(that is, not in English, Russian or Chinese). ESL did not publish the CIS grid for a long time, showing it just a few hours before the start of the matches. At the same time, the pairs were known in advance, and the bookmakers even opened lines for the results of the starting games.

The start of the season was not without loud bans and scandals. Before the start of the qualifications, the esports players once again reminded everyone that any in-game success can completely cancel out one wrong decision outside the server. Participation in fake matches or sexual harassment scandals (even if they are not proven guilty) can cost professional players not only their reputation, but also their career in the industry.

Valve and tournament operator Perfect World first banned forever players Newbeewhich in May 2023 accused of participating in match fixing – the organization itself was removed from official tournaments, as well as those who performed under its tag Xu Moogy Han, Zeng Faith Hundu, Yin Aq Rui, Yang waixi Xiao and Wen Wizard Lipeng… Similar punishment got the Avengerls mix playersinvolved in the machinations with Newbee. All of them were banned from playing in Valve tournaments and playing in the current and future seasons of the Dota Pro Circuit.

No less loud scandal unfolded around the American cybersportsman Jimmy DeMoN Ho. In the summer of 2023, his accused of sexual harassmentfollowed by studio BTS stopped working with him… In 2023, BTS became the organizer of the American division Dota Pro Circuit 2023 and disqualified DeMoN from the qualifiers. The cybersportsman said the ban was illegal and based on libel. Player denied all charges and promised to hire a lawyerto defend your reputation in court. Later esports journalist Rod Slasher Breslau reportedthat DeMoN was banned from Valve, although the company declined to publicly confirm this. In turn, BTS co-founder David GoDz Parker also noted that the studio has there is evidence of guilt DeMoN, so the punishment was deserved.

Traditionally, there have been scandals with “pirate” streams. So, Vladislav Kvyzee Kovalchuk and Rustam Adekvat Mavlyutov got a warning about a DMCA violation by the tournament operator Perfect World. Strikes were issued during the broadcast of the matches of the Chinese qualification for the top division of the Dota Pro Circuit 2023. Later, Vitaly, a commentator for the Maincast studio v1lat Dragons wrotethat the bans were issued for advertising (it is prohibited on unofficial streams). Kovalchuk with him didn’t agree – he suggested that the representatives of Maincast specifically persuaded Perfect World to complain only about those independent streamers who took a significant part of the audience from the studio.

In 2023, the number of independent tournaments may decrease… Long and dense competition season with strict rules may cause problems for participants with third-party organizers of LAN tournaments. They risk not finding strong teams, which means it will be difficult for them to attract sponsors and spectators. If you now look at the list of tournaments on the Liquipedia portal, then so far there is not a single major event, except for the official Dota Pro Circuit 2023 divisions.

Due to the smaller number of tournaments, the total amount of prize money can also be significantly reduced (if not taking into account The International). For example, in 2019 Team Secret has won over a million dollars in major and third-party tournaments. About the same amount Clement’s team Puppey Ivanova started working in 2023 as well. This season, Team Secret will be able to receive no more than $ 460,000 in the regional league and at the Majors ($ 30,000 each for the first places in two seasons and $ 200,000 for the first places in the two Majors). How much less successful teams can earn – difficult question… Valve has promised to release fan bundles, the sale of which should help clubs maintain lineups, but so far there is little information about this initiative.

According to Vitaly v1lat Volochai, Maincast commentator, in the near future should announce the new season of the EPIC League and the next tournament from WePlay. It is not known whether they will have offline finals. Perhaps third party organizers will remain “locked online“ for another year. As 2023 has shown, for many esports teams, this risks turning into a real disaster.