Commentator RuHub Vladimir Maelstorm Kuzminov became a guest of the first tavern podcast by Dmitry Finargot Plyusnina and BC Parimatch. In an hour-long interview, Kuzminov shared his opinion on why Valve gives too much freedom to the Dota 2 community, and also explained his view of the conflict between studios and unofficial streamers.
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According to Kuzmin, Valve does not impose strict rules or restrictions, as it appreciates the freedom of the community. The concomitant effect is scandals and conflicts that arise every year.
“Valve is a company that promotes freedom more, and where there is freedom, there is chaos. She cannot take and punish selectively one person. If you punish, then you need to introduce a system, and if the system – then impose strict restrictions. She does not want to introduce these restrictions. Maybe she just doesn’t want to do this, but Valve has always had it so that she encourages freedom. This opens up a lot of advantages for tournament organizers, for streamers from the people, etc., but it also creates certain chaos. So here [в ситуации с оскорблениями]“The lack of punishment is the reason why we have such scandals every year.”
Kuzminov also explained the position on the conflict between the studios and Russian-language streamers, who conduct unofficial broadcasts of tournaments. In more detail, he focused on the situation with Vitaliy v1lat Drag and Eugene Sh4dowehhh Alekseev.
“There isn’t such a thing that he streams his content and sometimes he comes to watch an interesting match. The point is that a person starts a stream over and over again, that is, purposefully, and at some point this, of course, can lead to an outflow of the audience from the official stream. Of course, how much Sh4dowehhh is interesting to the public, how much he understands the game is his dignity. But, in my opinion, the fact that someone parses better does not create a reason for theft of content. <…> By and large, everyone monetizes their streams anyway. A streamer with a thousand people already makes money on it [даже без рекламы], and if he does it also on a regular basis, then, naturally, he leads the audience away.
Valve is the only one who can intervene in this and give a ban, but she does not. Either she doesn’t want to get into it, or she believes that this is better for Dota 2. She probably knows better. So far, whatever one may say, no matter how they write that the studios are so bad, there are still many more people coming to the official broadcast. The only way to launch the Sh4dowehhh pirate broadcast, besides its excellent analysis and charisma, was v1lat itself, which attracted attention to it. ”
Maelstorm explained why the studio cannot and should not invite all streamer guests who are potentially able to lead the audience off the official broadcast.
“Studios cannot afford to buy everyone. And even if they buy Sh4dowehhh, there is someone else, and then what? The second point – there are still tenders and rights for which studios are fighting, redeeming, etc., and we must respect the fact that the studio owns this content. The third point – the studios, of course, should still care about the quality of the content, and if they won the tender, this does not mean that they can do whatever they want. They should give the audience the best. ”
The full release of the first Tavern podcast can be heard here. In it, Kuzminov also shared his opinion on the Battle Pass 2023 and a vision of what prevents Dota 2 from building up its audience.
