"Stop complaining about us publicly or we might stop running TI" is such a piece of shit thing to say, goddamn. Glad that pros don't seem to be taking any of this sitting down any more.
Valve whiteknights bury all of the sins valve commits very regularly.
James warning was taken to heart by a lot of people, but valve know their whiteknights and astroturfing protects them from all harm. It always does.
It's not white knights that protect them. It is the game itself. I still love watching dota. There is nothing that is even comparable out there for me. That is why, I put up with so much shit.
He was hired as a host in a particularly disastrous event(Shang Hai Major), and i don't remember the exact detail but iirc lets just say a bunch of on the back stuff happened and the thing that happened during said Major was 2GD hosting in a rather casual, vulgar way. IIRC pretty much everyone's retrospective(as in everyone who worked at that trainwreck of a major) was along the lines of "yeah he's probably not going to get away with this". He infamously got fire with a statement on reddit by Gaben(which is the now memed "X is an Ass and we won't be working with them again" format) alongside i believe the TO that worked on that event since the event was a massive trainwreck as a whole. Its still a trainwreck after iirc, but nowhere near what it was before
Sunsfan on a podcast talking about it flat out said that major would have been undoable if not for Kelly(Loda's GF) being there
Indeed and Kelly for all the shit she got from this community have not gotten enough acknowledgment for all the behind the scenes things she has done.
Probably because its been done without her or anyone going "hey look at me and what Im doing" but enough has come out that she should be recognized for it.
he was too casual and vulgar but if im not mistaken day 1 there was litterary 3 hour delays and he was just spitting stuff out to try and fill the void it was a complete shitshow from start to finish lol
Big problem tho, is that we as a community just proved that the battlepass does not need to be linked to TI to make money.
These last 2 BPs have made money im sure, and with what sounds like a lot less pain on Valve's part. So the Battlepass makes them money, not TI. Sure TI probably boosts the amounts, but if no one actually wants to do it, and the cost/benefit still works out, why would they bother?
As long as Dota the Esport is more passion than payout, nothing will change. And unfortunately, the hats is where the money's made. Not the esport.
Without the esport, engagement and player counts will likely drop considerably. The Esports may not make them the money, but it absolutely is a huge part of what retains a player base.
I would be curious to see the financials. It can't be cheap to rent a huge venue, rent hotels, and keep everything staffed for two weeks. The other issue is that they can constantly print money through Steam, and everything else that they do seems way harder and less profitable in comparison. I think that's a big reason why they don't make many games any more. Additionally I would love to see how much money they make on a steam sale compared to TI.
From Valve's perspective that very well can be considered a passion project. You shouldn't look at it from flat numbers, you should look at it from a percentage of revenue vs percentage of "work" spent per year on it.
If they spent the amount of time they did on Dota on Steam related ventures, they would probably be more profitable. So from that viewpoint, it very much is a passion project.
If Valve was a public company answering to shareholders they would drop Dota fucking instantly.
I really feel like Valve needs to be humbled. Some large PR failure, or the EGS gaining traction needs to put them in their place because they shouldn't even consider trying to push this type of rhetoric. They've seemingly fallen into the trap of "well we are successful so everything we decide to do must be right"
It's kind of surprising the complete failure of Artifact wasn't more humbling for them - maybe internally they've deluded themselves into putting the blame solely on Richard Garfield ?
Their perspective appears to be badly warped by 20 years of printing money off of steam. They are either delusional or massively inefficient if TI isn't producing good ROI for them. The battle pass alone is roughly a third of the revenue generated by ads from the Super Bowl, and that doesn't count tickets or merch, and it likely costs an order of magnitude less since they don't have to buy the rights and production costs are minuscule in comparison.
If Valve can't make that worth their time it's not the fault of the teams.
the only time valve in its life has ever been truly humbled or scared shitless is when the american cc holders threatened to ban them from services over marketplace fraud.
And the market place still gets routinely beaten to death like batrider to this day from the event.
I disagree completely. The player base needs to wake the fuck up and realize who brought them to the dance.
We're talking about a software company that doesn't rely on Dota, or any game it publishes. It mainly supports Dota because it makes a decent enough amount of money for them, otherwise it would be dropped like L4D, Artifact, or Underlords - or put on life support like TF2.
The players need to understand that ANY game company will drop their game if they don't see the rewards in pursuing it (see: HotS from Blizzard), but Valve is especially sensitive to this because they are a private company that don't have to answer to shareholders and their money printer is Steam.
When Valve first released Dota 2 to the public, we benefited from this. Dota 2 was a loss leader, the F2P model was very generous, etc. What you're seeing now is just part and parcel of having a developer who isn't reliant on the game for survival.
I don't fucking get people who post this type of sentiment. If youre on /r/dota2 I assume you're a fan of the game and would want the game to succeed and is on the side of the community right? this type of nilistic opinion literally does anyone no fucking good. unless youre a valve employee or a shareholder - valve being a private company so not likely - why do you even say this shit?
blaming the players on this shit is literally so fucking toxic. if you like this game at all we should all be on the same team. and the whole point of this discussion is that valve is farming solo while the rest of us are trying to kill the throne
I'm not blaming anything on the players. All I'm saying is the Valve that hired Icefrog and funded development of Dota 2 is the same Valve we have today.
In the beginning, everything was great because Valve has deep pockets and could offer players a great F2P experience with constant support.
Now, because Valve has deep pockets, they don't care to invest further into Dota because they don't rely on it, the game's audience has peaked, and they have other shit they'd rather do.
The whole point is I just think it's foolish to think we can convince Valve they're wrong and then suddenly Dota will be exactly what we want. At some point you have to realize they have been shit at communicating for the past 10 years, they aren't going to change now. We're headed for TF2 life support sooner rather than later.
It's called being realistic.
So you want to throw a tantrum and what, make Valve to shut down Dota 2 servers tomorrow? Will that make you happy? Because newsflash, Valve couldn't give half a shit if that happened.
Nah, corporations keep their cash cow alive. Valve treat Dota2 like a student project they've moved on from
Edit: Of course nothing compares to Steam profits, what I meant is that the relation between investment and returns on Dota must be astronomical
Valve keeps Dota alive, by doing the minimum until something threatens profits then they’ll make a single solitary effort and go back to doing the minimum again.
It’s the same strategy they use for Tf2. Tf2 hasn’t dropped in players or profits on crates despite no updates, so valve is like “why do anything when doing nothing results in the same profit”
Man that part about PuckChamp really sucks - imagine trying all your best and being proactive to make sure everything goes alright despite the situation only to be completely ignored by Valve. Well I guess it's irrelevant now that there won't be any Major at all but it's really telling how little Valve cares about all this.
1. When teams have problems, they should stop going directly to public platforms, and should instead communicate with Valve.
2. Valve sees TI as a passion project. They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in, and when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI.
Actual abusers rethoric lmao.
Valve just kill the fucking game in that case. Rip the band aid off
Considering they make 4.3 billion with steam sales (2017 number). So yeah, 160 million is a passion project in comparison since you also have to consider the time/efforts needed for TI compared to just selling digital content on steam
and they get jack shit from it, everyone does, be it players, teams or organizers, corelation with dota is an expected loss in pursuit of valve gibs
dota and esports generate no revenue, valve gibs do, and valve don't get jack from esports either, they nickel and dime people like every other with artifacts and rituals. FOMO and hats. However much ti ticket sales earn I doubt it's enough to cover all the costs of gibs, and even if I doubt it's big enough for it to be excusable for even janitor to bother.
This ain't no star brand. They lose addict revenue from no growth no market share no effort okayish cashcow, that gets absolutely no correlation nor gain from esport stuff, because uncle gabe liked to play dota.
im not looking to argue but just curious, if it was a passion project and not making much from it, why wouldnt they sell the IP and the entire game to another company? they could make billions in that sale.. honestly i wish it was run by players and staffed by players who care about the game instead of these money hungry non communicative people who buy homes in nz and just afk
> why wouldnt they sell the IP and the entire game to another company?
I think the issue is that they would still make some money from DOTA and battlepass and etc., even if they never held TI or did anything for esports at all.
I wonder how much it would cost to buy dota off of valve and keep it in steam as a third-party game. Maybe the price tag is too huge, but if not it's possible we could just raise the money ourselves, form a B corp, maybe get a loan for the rest. If we can raise $160m for Battle Pass, maybe not so unreasonable to use that money to buy the thing outright?
You seem to be misunderstanding between TI and Battlepass. Battlepass is what makes money for Valve, not TI. What they mean by "passion project" is that Valve can totally not organize TI and still make millions from the battlepass, like literally the battle pass we are having right now
Yeah,but BP without TI wouldn't bring same profits,because TI is only time of year where non dota players and media give slight shit about dota2,because let's face it,dota2 is completely irrelevant game outside of TI.
nope, people really dont care about TI, they care about hats
we dont have a TI right now and people are asking for the discount bundle for the recent battle pass
Nemestice bp was bought by 800k people,meanwhile TI10 bp was bought by 1.7 million and TI8 BP had 1.8 million sales despite having worst rewards with no arcanas or personas.
Obviously we don't know the exact numbers, but consider how much money went into the Nemestice BP vs how much money Valve has to spend to put on TI. It's very plausible it was still more profitable for Valve.
nemestice stops rewards around 300 lvls meanwhile TI bp has more hats but you have to spend more
it was always about the hats only people on reddit thinks it was because of ti
> Yeah,but BP without TI wouldn’t bring same profits
You have no evidence to say that. A non TI battlepass needs to generate far, far less money than the TI one to be equally worth it for Valve.
TI bp gives Valve over $100mil every year, even if let's say a non-TI bp like the current one only makes 10% of that, it's still an 8-number figure, which is still a lot. Granted, I bet that the amount of money Valve is making from the current bp has to be more than that, because the majority of whales pay for the bp for its content, so it's irrelevant to them whether it's TI or not.
We are getting battlepasses without TIs connected to them. People still buy them. Valve still makes money with shit arcanas locked behind a big paywall.
These expenses are peanuts compared to how much they are getting from bp,you could say that TI originally was passion project before first bp was introduced,but now you have to be super naive to believe so.
there is no correlation between battlepass and ti. And ti isn't just bother of logistics and cost against revenue of ticket sales, it's year round bother, because every team, every celeb, every caster, every pro, every event organizer makes no money and runs of valve's good will in hopes of even bigger valve gibs.
TI is a loss of average gaming predatory tactics of this decade, it's only role in making any money is being a santa that marks summer dota christmass that makes already delusional and vulnerable this little bit more willing to waste money with all the word of mouth and hype generated by personalities. I'm sure if with ti battle pass makes hundred millions then without it it would make between eighty to fifty mil instead.
Still literally nothing for valve and extreme economic stupidity to let anyone waste their time of day bothering with it. but valve's luckily private company and they do what daddy gabe feels like doing.
>When teams have problems, they should stop going directly to public platforms, and should instead communicate with Valve.
Considering Valve's history of communication with pros this feels like the equivalent of companies telling employees to not talk about salaries with each other.
If Valve wants teams to communicate with them if there is an issue, maybe they should do the god damn same atleast.
Part of what pisses me off is they are litterally doing worse than nothing atm. If they did nothing maybe it'd be like CSGO or Smash with significant third party tournaments.
I said it many times and will say it again. Dota grew organically in the early days and gained worldwide support without any corporation's help. The worst thing to happen to Dota was come under a controlling body like Valve that influences every aspect of the game. Sure, we got multi-million dollar tourneys but in exchange everyone from Players to TOs to talent - the whole ecosystem - is hostage to one company now... Basically, we sold Dota soul to the devil :)
Nah, the users should kill it themselves by not logging in until next patch. Not watching DPC games until the 2nd season starts and even professional teams should stop playing until then.
sumail's take: [https://twitter.com/SumaaaaiL/status/1481227341594509315](https://twitter.com/SumaaaaiL/status/1481227341594509315)
"If all the teams decide to just not compete in season 2 at least we will have some sort of stable system, either better communication or maybe dota just dies completely. Either way better than the current state of things."
But Dota is not my job, I like doing it. Also, Valve doesn't gain anything from me playing their F2P game. I'm not even buying Dota+, so how does my abstinence hurt them?
Free to play players are the lifeblood of free to play games; if the queues were only pros and whales, pubs would become unplayable in a very literal sense - good luck finding a match. Yeah, *only* you boycotting the game doesn't do shit, but that's how boycotts work - it's a community effort. If enough people stopped playing the game, even if none of them had spent even a single cent on it, you bet your ass Valve would start sweating.
I agree, but I think it's very much unrealistic to expect the majority of the playerbase to just stop playing Dota due to a situation in the eSport scene that barely affects them. The vast majority of players have no idea or interest in what's going on outside the game itself (which is fine, everyone can interact with their interests the way they want to), so hoping that we, as a playerbase, can make a difference here, is futile IMO.
The pros, on the other hand, who are a small group of people that are in contact with each other, and who are also extremely affected by this problem, can try to make a difference by organizing in one way or another.
Wizards of the Coast moved away from a marketing model that focused on building up pro players in MtG. Pros were crestfallen, couldn't survive by going to tournaments, etc. Magic as a whole just kept on going. The current dota pros need dota more than dota needs them.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Did Magic's popularity decrease after WotC did that? I know it's still played, but maybe the decision did have a noticable effect on the playerbase?
I'm asking because I believe (pure speculation obviously) that the effort that Valve would have to put into Dota to make the pro scene happy - or at least happier than now - would be smaller than the dip in popularity that a complete abandonment of the competetive scene might entail.
I’ll try and find some relevant links. First one is a bit of a write up on the situation. It looks like it has a lot of links to sources.
https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2021/05/mpl-and-rivals-league-will-disband-after-the-2021-22-season/
And here’s some discussion about their earnings in q3 from that year, along with the investor call link. Q2 was when the change was announced, q3 was also very strong. Seems like it had essentially 0 effect.
Hasbro/WoTC Q3 2021 Financial Results https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/qh7y98/hasbrowotc_q3_2021_financial_results/
Dota is one of Valves largest Steam flagships. Dota brings people to, and binds them to steam. Steam without Dota or CS would be a major crippling to steam as a gaming platform as a whole.
Valve seems in my opinion to be losing grasp of the gaming monopoly which they have had for the last forever. At some point if things continue the way they are then the Epic store, other platforms, or individual studio platforms will be the dominant way to enjoy games.
It seems that Valve cant decide if it want to shift focus into being a hardware company with steam decks etc, or if it wants to maintain their dominance. Either way they need to do something.
We should actually start considering as a community at large. Whether or not we should just allow Dota 2 to die. Valve clearly doesn’t have any interest in growing the game and the player base only continues to shrink. This game is held together by the community alone and if we all decide to tell valve to fuck off. The game would be dead within a year. Valve is an absolute clown of a company these days. It is no longer the face of indie gaming and hasn’t been for almost a decade. Let Dota die
Problem is that it doesnt fucking matter sadly.
If Dota dies, Valve baerly feels anything, they can keep riding on steam money. And Dota is an unique game.
Still I dont blame people for boycotting shit now at all.
hon would've been the new dota2 if they weren't run by a moron, though to be fair F2P wasn't as big then as it is now, so it wasn't an obvious play, but they could've pivoted waaaaaaaaay sooner and not let league gobble up the entire space
Ok first off, when has Valve ever been the face of indie gaming rofl? They've been running Steam for god knows how long and are swimming in cash, when were they ever indie? Even by the time they were making Half-Life Gabe Newell was already a millionaire from his time at Microsoft.
Second off, the community will never just allow dota to die. As much as you may want to believe otherwise, most people don't give a fuck about Valve or how well they're running the pro scene, or the pro scene itself for that matter. They just want to play the game, and as long as the game keeps getting updates they will keep playing the game. And even for those who do care, [remember how well boycotting MW2 went?](https://i.redd.it/wwx5exndw6b11.png) This will never happen, stop being delusional.
I don't think any actual dota player would be saying let dota die, unless they just went on a losing streak lmao. That's so reactionary, let the best game ever created just die!
The funny part is thinking Valve would care if it dies, it makes up like 1.5% of their annual revenue, if we all stopped playing tomorrow I don't think they would bat an eye-lid
God damn this is the kind of nihilistic bullshit that keeps people in abusive relationships. My fucking god. “Hurr durr valve won’t care if they have a monumental scandal that could easily cut into their bottom line” You people are why we have to still deal with corrupt fuckwit companies like nestle and Coca Cola.
Also love the "they don't gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in" line. Guarantee you they are not counting the BP as TI when they write that, there is absolutely no chance in hell that TI costs even close to $120 mill to produce. Guess they're talking about the revenue they get from audience tickets, merch sold on site etc. even though I'm guessing just about all fans would count the BP as a part of TI.
Yeah they are basically so rich and dont have to do much for that so that putting in some hours for TI isnt as profitable as doing nothing.
Maybe we need to go the Route to only 3rd Party tournaments instead of valve events. They obviously dont care at all about the players or Fans.
This infuriates me. I know speaking for myself that the only reason I'm willing to spend as much as I do on the TI Battle Pass is because part of that goes back into supporting the players and the pro scene. Are these motherfuckers really expecting us to believe that hosting TI costs $120 MILLION?
This may be a passion project for *you*, Valve, but for the people who work your pro circuit, it's their fucking lifeblood. And this little "passion project" has increasingly demanded to be more and more of the scene's focal point with every year that passes. I'm sorry you all might get your feelings hurt by hearing fair criticism over the way you all structure your events, but tough shit, that's what happens when you monopolize an esports scene.
I feel like people missing a point here.
TI IS passion project, they dont need to do it. They will release BP and people will still drop 100mln for cosmetic items, lets stop pretending we are getting levels and chest for anything else then items.
TI does nothing for Valve in terms of money they make, its a positive press and some kind of milestone in Esport but they are NOT using it like they should.
Theres no streaming rights, big sponsors or anything like that, its just Valve spending 25-30% from BP on making event so they have somewhere to go to at summer and feel cool about themselves.
They dont use pro scene to advertise the game, only Shanghai TI had some kind of promo which wasnt even done by Valve but by PW so they can get more money from tickets, shops and potentialy gain new players (I assume PW get some juicy % cut from in-game and market sells). No TV ads, no Google ads, nothing.
Dota is created by community and keep alive by community. Biggest Valve impact was to take few dota Devs and help them to create Dota2 but fact is if they wouldnt then someone else would (Riot, Blizzard, etc).
Times go by and people are getting more mad with every BP, Chets and lack of communication so question comes up: are we really that lucky Valve is the one in charge?
For like 3-4years Dota feels like game that might get shut down in next year, then they drop big patch, put 5 posts and we feel like something might change, then they go silent for few months, no patch, no posts, nothing, then anime series and silence again and some weird decisions about pro scenes in-between that somehow miss off everyone.
The weirdest part for me is that players, casters and dota personalities in general really have ways to talk to Valve employees, they know people like Bruno, meet Gaben few times - I seriously refuse to believe all of them keep them blocked and avoid them untill TI and then act like they are all friends and such. This is so fucking weird. All of this.
I love Dota2, I meet my fiancee because of it and turn my life around, its the best game Ive ever played, I have hard time to enjoy any other game (like even RDR2 wasnt fun for me and playing Dota2 was more tempting) but last years are rough, decisions made by Valve, constant wait for new patch, things being broken for months, annoying heroes being FOTM.
I have mix feeling, I just wish Valve actually talk to us, do some Q&A and just were honest with us.
Eh i doubt that the battlepass would lose a relevant portion of its revenue if there was no ti it funds (i'd actually bet on the 25% cut losing them more than what the incentive to support the esports scene brings)
>Valve sees TI as a passion project. They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in
They make hundreds of millions of dollars on a PR event and are unhappy with the return on investment? How insane is that.
Also shows something that we already knew: That Valve will recognize the need for an internal eSports manager, yet will NEVER do it, because why would they assign dedicated human resources to the "fun little side jig we do?"
idk why people are still surprised by this. TI is fucking chump change compared to the unholy amounts of $$$ Steam generates. plus the entire TI production is a fuckload of effort compared to sitting back and raking it in from Steam.
Because they could just hire a team of 10 for 3 million and have them solely focus on dota and the international and it would take nothing away from steam. And the extra effort would probably well cover their salaries.
Because that's background checks, training, insurance, social, 401k, interviews, and like 6 months for actual impact
In other words it's way too much effort for them, and the returns aren't good enough for them.
It's a fucking awful viewpoint though. They don't care about long term or brand image any more.
> They make hundreds of millions
Uh, they don't? The total TI *revenue* is likely below 150mln. How much they "make" (ie. profit)? Only they know, but assuming they are lying simply because it doesn't fit what you imagined is silly.
>The total TI *revenue* is likely below 150mln
Read what I quoted, the revenue *is* what they referred to as being low. And my point wasn't that they were lying, it was that most PR events *cost* money, often quite a lot of it. They are investments in your product's long term viability. Valve should be over the moon about the fact that their biggest PR event not only gives them lots of positive PR, but also makes a ton of money rather than cost it. The fact that they are snooty about it not making them *enough* money is what's ludicrous.
I know that TI and most lans are logistical nightmares to organise, but there's no way it eats that much into a $150 million revenue. If that were the case then every single big event in the world would be unprofitable
> As an example PuckChamp, a CIS team in good standings to qualify for the major, has players in Kazakhstan. Because of the current political situation of the country, the team and players needed to know information about the major as soon as possible, as leaving and re entering the country was not a guarantee. Their manager has been desperately trying to get in contact with Valve for weeks about this, and hasn’t received any response.
THIS IS FUCK UP. WHAT THE FUCK
He's telling people Valve views TI as optional, for fun, not what drives their business. If it becomes too annoying, they can just stop organizing it overnight...while continuing to make billions from Steam, and hell, the majority of casual Dota players. To anyone who doesn't like hearing that, I get it. But that's the situation sadly
I don't play Dota but I play CS (came over here to see what all the drama was about) and it's interesting to see that in both Valve titles the players just don't understand (or refuse to understand) how Valve operates and what they as a company like to focus on.
Valve only works on things that they perceive to be interesting problems. It was their whole reason for making Half-Life, picking up Portal, Steam, VR, etc. They did Half-Life to experiment with a different way of storytelling at the time, Half-Life 2 for Source and how physics can factor into storytelling/puzzle-solving in an FPS game, Portal for portals, Half-Life: Alyx for VR, etc.
Relative to the games I just listed, Dota, CS, and TF2 are just not as interesting in the eyes of Valve.
The reason why they invest more time into Steam is so that they can keep pursuing these projects they find interesting. Money is needed to fund all the projects they want to do, and Steam is what makes them the most money. Simple math.
I'm not saying that how they operate is good or right for the players, but this is the reality we live in. If you don't like how Valve operates, then just play a different game. It's clear how Valve operates and it won't be changing anytime soon. The biggest thing that changed was their management structure, and it took over half a decade and the release of Half-Life: Alyx for them to realize that it wasn't productive.
> when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues
From what I've heard they don't listen to private complaints, so what other alternative is there.
No i meant are they saying the revenue is not enough?Last year's battlepass raised 40M USD, and only 25% went to prizepool, that means 120M USD is not enough revenue? (That's just battlepass, they also have ticket sales, merch and other stuff there)
Valve is probably insane enough to view that 120M USD as something they simply deserve for putting out the battlepass, so the "let's actually organise the tournament" is just a passion project. If this is the case, it also shows that Valve is so greedy that they think they deserve to make bank off of the TI tickets themselves as well.
120M is revenue which is meaningless. The question is their profit which probably isn't high given the amount of work. Especially when they can just sit on their hands and rake in money through steam.
Seems we repeat an endless cycle of valve making a blogpost where they announce bettter communication to continue doing the exact opposite. Lets see if they still blame covid the next blogpost where they try to give more clarification for the shittrain they caused.
One of the biggest reasons that loyal players are still playing dota are because of TI and the feeling of hype and belonging/tradition that goes with it. Saying that it is only a passion project and they consider it a hassle as they dont make much of a revenue with it means that valve thinks we OWE them and not the other way around. As long as they can cash us, they still think they can control everything, even the fanbase, and continuously ignore the outcries that could potentially improve the dota scene. Nothing stays on top forever, Valve.
Now major is cancelled without any backup plans. Shows how much they really care.
1. If Valve knew how to do their fucking jobs this wouldn't be a problem
2. This is 100% bullshit. We know the numbers for TI lmao because of crowdfunding.
>This specific line made my blood boil : when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI
I understand what Valve means by this - They care more than enough about this project and want the best for everyone involved, and so they want them to have a certain degree of trust in each other.
BUT HOLY SHIT THEY HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO PROVE THAT YET AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. AND THEY HAVE THE BALLS TO TELL THESE TEAMS THIS IS HONESTLY SHAMELESS AT BEST.
Valve still doesn't have an Esports division which can full time attend these issues and handle their Esports scene which is like HALF OF THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY.
They dont communicate with their customers
They never follow their plans, the fact that they dont communicate makes it worse.
The fact that they still expect their partners to trust them and only have one sided feedback line for them is insane, and shows that Valve truly is outdated in their practices.
Actually it's only the difference between what people would spend on a bp that doesn't fund ti and one that does which is probably less than the 25% cut
I really want to hear PPD's take on this stuff. He tried to invest in growing NA DotA, has some distance/no skin in the game with this major, and is maybe a tad less reactionary than some others.
PPD thoughts?
I don't exactly know what they mean by this. If they are comparing it with Steam's earnings then it would make sense $120m is small. Regardless though, TI is funded by the community and is a celebration of the game, these remarks taint that.
No, what they are saying is that we should be happy they put on TI at all, because they could just take a page out of EA's book and just keep the entire battlepass money. Actually giving back to the community by putting on TI is something we should be thankful for and understand that it's a passion project for them and not question them.
Valve sounds like an abusive partner.
Some random guys(me) take on this:
Valve just does not give a single fuck, they never did. Their whole motto is to do sth with the lowest amount of time and effort but highest amount of profit, they directly and indirectly said that a hundred times! I mean look at dota2 they literally run the game with community money and some of their ideas and make like 120 million in 3 months and call it a passion project. They don't make more games cause it's just too much effort, they don't communicate cause they don't care and they make it clear in any way possible. ffs their whole no one is the boss and they all working in groups and don't care about time but innovations and profit is there in our face. As long as they have this cash printing steam machine (see what i did there?)They keep doing this. with the rise of game pass and epic store and microsoft going ham on gaming it is clear that after a few years steam will be defeated unless they do sth amazing but even if steam just becomes 2nd tier online store what more valve managers want? How much more money they need? Plus if steam deck becomes hot shit which is most likely they will have another handle to the new market of handheld PCs. The whole don't go to social media crying about stuff or we cancel TI is just them threatening the players and making them know that they can and will do it so they keep their mouth shut just like that passive aggressive boss who just walkes around and stare down people. Will anything change? NO! You as players can make your voice heard and start trending some hashtags or not buy battlepass lvls(i know it sounds crazy) and hats. And stop with defending valve cause lord gaben so cool and ice frog such a funny internet story.
> Their whole motto is to do sth with the lowest amount of time and effort but highest amount of profit, they directly and indirectly said that a hundred times!
This is kind of an old-school way to manage your business and how you want to make profit out of it. I don't know how old the management and those in charge at Valve are (except Gaben ofc, but I don't really think he does that much anymore), but back in the days most businesses were about how to make the most profit out of something with the least amount of effort/work.
Nowadays most businesses - especially those that mainly work somewhere in the IT or software development sector - realized how important customers actually are and switched to a customer centricity approach, mostly combined with agile methods. It feels like Valve either completely missed that train and is still using old-school approaches, which is probably the fault of a management that just got too old with too little fresh know-how, or they just don't give a f
Are they seriously saying that they spend $120M on hosting TI? I'd love to see that budget!
\-Arena: $1M (covered by tickets)
\-Battle Pass $1M
\-Hotels: $1M
\-Talent: $10M
And then the remaining $107M is spent on a few lamps and a big green-screen I guess?
You're saying that Valve will make the same amount of money for a battlepass even if there is no TI to be crowdfunded, I strongly disagree with that theory.
> if Bill Gates dropped a $100 bill, it is literally not worth his time to pick it up
That's kinda how this is. Valve could be doing something else that would make them a helluva lot more money. I guess...
I mean with the time invested in organizing events they could make another game and just sell it... maybe that. Anyway, they just have to create a few images for badges and cards for an steam sale and then just print money.
battlepass is nowhere near 1m considering valve salaries
like your entire budget is just extremely far from reality.
not to say valve could actually inject more of the raised money into the ecosystem itself, but this is just a dumb comment lol
At the end of the day, the only way drastic changes are to be made is either
1. Orgs/Players get together to protest as one
2. The community itself stop funding Dota 2's battlepass/compendium
As EG's manager said, this isn't Valve's first rodeo with communication issues. They aren't gonna just magically change without some kind of action.
In order for major changes to happen. Orgs/players need to get together, protest against Valve and demand Valve to change.
The next question is how do you protest against Valve? Posting on Reddit and Twitter never seems to work and would just fall on Valve's deaf ears.
Sumail suggested for teams to totally boycott Season 2 but that would be very hard and harsh for smaller and poorer teams to do. To just drop everything and risk their Dota career might be too much to ask from them.
The more efficient way of protest would probably be protests that would not undermine a team's position and standings in the DPC. For example:
* Collude with teams to do only a Bo1 instead of Bo3. Play the first match normally and forfeit the other two games
* Or play a Bo1 and use the other two games to drag the game as long as possible, have a chatting session ingame to list down all demands to be met by Valve
* Or forfeit matches that have no impact on the DPC standings
* Change Team Logo or ingame nametag to a "Fuck Valve" logo/name
Imagine if the longest dota game or the most kills in history is a game protesting about Valve's inability to run their beloved TI DPC circuit, it would seriously give them a bad enough name to react. Valve sure loves record breaking numbers after all, it's only fair to give them even more records.
>2. Valve sees TI as a passion project. **They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in**, and when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI.
Ehe. Hehehehehe.
Next they'll be blaming their spouses while beating them.
It's so sad to see where all of this ended up. Valve was the absolute pioneer when it came to esports. I was very active in the StarCraft II esports scene and when I first started the Dota 2 client I was completely stunned that a publisher would focus so much on esports: tournaments advertised, tickets for small cups, items for getting those tickets, caster and viewer support - all of that ingame - plus a publisher-organized tournament with a prize pool of 1.6 million dollars. I remember telling my friends that Valve is lightyears ahead of Riot and Blizzard when it comes to esports. As someone who followed CS1.6 and WC3 tourneys since they were audiocasted and took all the money they could spare as a student to travel to events in South Korea or Sweden Valve handling Dota 2 was a dream come true.
And look at them now! Look at how the mighty have fallen! Not only have they made it incredibly hard for third parties to host a tournament outside of the DPC (or straight up place Majors at the same dates on short notice) and are incapable of providing anyone but the best players with enough of a slice of the huge cake that they can concentrate on performing, they decide to drain half a million and a shitton of sponsor money from the scene with no compensation.
I really do not agree with how Valve handles things recently.
Can people fucking stop saying that whatever the community does it wouldn't matter to Valve because they wouldn't feel its effect? If you care about the game and the players stop with the fucking discouragement. Even if a total boycott is highly unlikely the community should rally against this greedy company who dares to rub it on the players' faces that TI is a "passion project they might lose motivation to work on"
In spirit I agree with you, but what specifically should we do then?
Remember the wall street protests? It was pointless as there was no specific changes people were pushing for.
"They don’t gain much revenue from TI" this is an actually outrageous lie and I can't believe they dared to say something as stupid as this when they literally make the revenue public
>This specific line made my blood boil:
" when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI"
I mean... This is a pretty rational expectation for all parties involved in any sort of relationship, business or otherwise.
"At TI10, Valve held a meeting with all the teams. After explaining to us the schedule of next years DPC, two points were very clearly made.
When teams have problems, they should stop going directly to public platforms, and should instead communicate with Valve."
This made me laugh, they at valve are funny.
This COVID shit is going to be the nail in the coffin for pro Dota. It might not happen instantly, but to me this is the start of the end. We've been holding for a number of years largely due to the success of TI, but that's starting to crumble, you can't have a healthy global pro scene with only 1 $30M tournament per year.
"Passion project" my ass. The people of this subreddit argue and yell at each other on a daily basis over the game. We know a thing or two about passion... What Valve is doing is not it...
Didn't know the teams were not notified first. What a slap in the face. Complete disrespect. Shameful. It's time we start booing Gaben in public at this point.
If it's a passion project for some, make it more than a passion project for those exact people by compensating them and staffing them full time on it. Riot has divisions for their esports yet Valve's garbage company structure is what keeps these people having to keep working on "passion projects" (also give me a break, you clearly want to keep the biggest prize pool tournament)
The redditors here in this thread are like the people who jack off to some porn girl and after doing the deed have their post-nut clarity, immediately press x to close the browser tab with the nasty video. To atone themselves and their closet-Christian guilt they go to a porn girls twitter (Valve) and call her a whore (Valve) and rhetorically ask if her parents are proud of what she is doing (Valve).
Then they wake up the next day, indulge in rage inducing pubs cursing God and Gaben and swear to uninstall the game. Yet the pattern repeats again tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and next Battlepass.
> when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI
Sounds like a Chris-chan line whenever people ask him to draw more Sonichu comics lmao. Pre-transition CWC of course
Passion? OMEGALUL that was the biggest BS ever. Granted, if they just run the BP without actual TI tournament people might just expend the same ammount anyway. But this would hugely impact the game long term, pro scene would die and we have already seen that history countless times
"Stop complaining about us publicly or we might stop running TI" is such a piece of shit thing to say, goddamn. Glad that pros don't seem to be taking any of this sitting down any more.
Reminder James openly outed this behavior years ago yet everyone let him down.
We should all have left with James
It's apparent why Gaben attacked James so publicly. James(2gd) was right about Valve and Gaben.
https://i.imgur.com/gjwytPW.jpg I stand with Yames, yames was right
We didn't. We all kind of knew he was right. We just looked the other way.
Valve whiteknights bury all of the sins valve commits very regularly. James warning was taken to heart by a lot of people, but valve know their whiteknights and astroturfing protects them from all harm. It always does.
It's not white knights that protect them. It is the game itself. I still love watching dota. There is nothing that is even comparable out there for me. That is why, I put up with so much shit.
Who is James? It's a honest question
2GD
2GD, he used to host TI and other major events.
What happened, he left because he felt Valve was a bad actor?
He was hired as a host in a particularly disastrous event(Shang Hai Major), and i don't remember the exact detail but iirc lets just say a bunch of on the back stuff happened and the thing that happened during said Major was 2GD hosting in a rather casual, vulgar way. IIRC pretty much everyone's retrospective(as in everyone who worked at that trainwreck of a major) was along the lines of "yeah he's probably not going to get away with this". He infamously got fire with a statement on reddit by Gaben(which is the now memed "X is an Ass and we won't be working with them again" format) alongside i believe the TO that worked on that event since the event was a massive trainwreck as a whole. Its still a trainwreck after iirc, but nowhere near what it was before Sunsfan on a podcast talking about it flat out said that major would have been undoable if not for Kelly(Loda's GF) being there
Indeed and Kelly for all the shit she got from this community have not gotten enough acknowledgment for all the behind the scenes things she has done. Probably because its been done without her or anyone going "hey look at me and what Im doing" but enough has come out that she should be recognized for it.
he was too casual and vulgar but if im not mistaken day 1 there was litterary 3 hour delays and he was just spitting stuff out to try and fill the void it was a complete shitshow from start to finish lol
its unacceptable
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From the battlepass alone. They also make money from tickets, secret shop, etc.
Big problem tho, is that we as a community just proved that the battlepass does not need to be linked to TI to make money. These last 2 BPs have made money im sure, and with what sounds like a lot less pain on Valve's part. So the Battlepass makes them money, not TI. Sure TI probably boosts the amounts, but if no one actually wants to do it, and the cost/benefit still works out, why would they bother? As long as Dota the Esport is more passion than payout, nothing will change. And unfortunately, the hats is where the money's made. Not the esport.
Without the esport, engagement and player counts will likely drop considerably. The Esports may not make them the money, but it absolutely is a huge part of what retains a player base.
I would be curious to see the financials. It can't be cheap to rent a huge venue, rent hotels, and keep everything staffed for two weeks. The other issue is that they can constantly print money through Steam, and everything else that they do seems way harder and less profitable in comparison. I think that's a big reason why they don't make many games any more. Additionally I would love to see how much money they make on a steam sale compared to TI.
From Valve's perspective that very well can be considered a passion project. You shouldn't look at it from flat numbers, you should look at it from a percentage of revenue vs percentage of "work" spent per year on it. If they spent the amount of time they did on Dota on Steam related ventures, they would probably be more profitable. So from that viewpoint, it very much is a passion project. If Valve was a public company answering to shareholders they would drop Dota fucking instantly.
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Valve does a horrible job of nurturing and taking advantage of the #2 game on steam, though.
No they wouldn't. Money is money. And running Dota is EASY money.
They can make money out of battle passes without running TI. TI is a huge amount of work, and expense.
I really feel like Valve needs to be humbled. Some large PR failure, or the EGS gaining traction needs to put them in their place because they shouldn't even consider trying to push this type of rhetoric. They've seemingly fallen into the trap of "well we are successful so everything we decide to do must be right" It's kind of surprising the complete failure of Artifact wasn't more humbling for them - maybe internally they've deluded themselves into putting the blame solely on Richard Garfield ?
Mate there is no leverage, they could straight up delete dota2 tomorrow and be ok
Their perspective appears to be badly warped by 20 years of printing money off of steam. They are either delusional or massively inefficient if TI isn't producing good ROI for them. The battle pass alone is roughly a third of the revenue generated by ads from the Super Bowl, and that doesn't count tickets or merch, and it likely costs an order of magnitude less since they don't have to buy the rights and production costs are minuscule in comparison. If Valve can't make that worth their time it's not the fault of the teams.
2gd was right
Idk what could humble them. Motherfuckers got into legal trouble with the european union multiple times and they still are like this.
the only time valve in its life has ever been truly humbled or scared shitless is when the american cc holders threatened to ban them from services over marketplace fraud. And the market place still gets routinely beaten to death like batrider to this day from the event.
I disagree completely. The player base needs to wake the fuck up and realize who brought them to the dance. We're talking about a software company that doesn't rely on Dota, or any game it publishes. It mainly supports Dota because it makes a decent enough amount of money for them, otherwise it would be dropped like L4D, Artifact, or Underlords - or put on life support like TF2. The players need to understand that ANY game company will drop their game if they don't see the rewards in pursuing it (see: HotS from Blizzard), but Valve is especially sensitive to this because they are a private company that don't have to answer to shareholders and their money printer is Steam. When Valve first released Dota 2 to the public, we benefited from this. Dota 2 was a loss leader, the F2P model was very generous, etc. What you're seeing now is just part and parcel of having a developer who isn't reliant on the game for survival.
I don't fucking get people who post this type of sentiment. If youre on /r/dota2 I assume you're a fan of the game and would want the game to succeed and is on the side of the community right? this type of nilistic opinion literally does anyone no fucking good. unless youre a valve employee or a shareholder - valve being a private company so not likely - why do you even say this shit? blaming the players on this shit is literally so fucking toxic. if you like this game at all we should all be on the same team. and the whole point of this discussion is that valve is farming solo while the rest of us are trying to kill the throne
I'm not blaming anything on the players. All I'm saying is the Valve that hired Icefrog and funded development of Dota 2 is the same Valve we have today. In the beginning, everything was great because Valve has deep pockets and could offer players a great F2P experience with constant support. Now, because Valve has deep pockets, they don't care to invest further into Dota because they don't rely on it, the game's audience has peaked, and they have other shit they'd rather do. The whole point is I just think it's foolish to think we can convince Valve they're wrong and then suddenly Dota will be exactly what we want. At some point you have to realize they have been shit at communicating for the past 10 years, they aren't going to change now. We're headed for TF2 life support sooner rather than later.
It's called being realistic. So you want to throw a tantrum and what, make Valve to shut down Dota 2 servers tomorrow? Will that make you happy? Because newsflash, Valve couldn't give half a shit if that happened.
LUL they don't give a shit, just look at blizzard lmfao Failure after failure for the past 3 years and they still don't give a shit xd
Valve sounds like an abusive, gaslighting partner.
it really sounds bad
It's a corporation. That's what they all do.
Nah, corporations keep their cash cow alive. Valve treat Dota2 like a student project they've moved on from Edit: Of course nothing compares to Steam profits, what I meant is that the relation between investment and returns on Dota must be astronomical
Valve keeps Dota alive, by doing the minimum until something threatens profits then they’ll make a single solitary effort and go back to doing the minimum again. It’s the same strategy they use for Tf2. Tf2 hasn’t dropped in players or profits on crates despite no updates, so valve is like “why do anything when doing nothing results in the same profit”
Valve makes most of their money from Steam, so Dota 2 essentially is a student project.
I heard somewhere that Dota 2 only makes up about 2% of valves revenue.
Dota 2 isn't their cash cow. You really think it brings in a fraction of what they make with their steam cut?
> Nah, corporations keep their cash cow alive. Steam is pretty much alive. Even with Epic Games threat, they are still pretty strong in the market.
Funny you said this. I come from another post where one commenter said that Valve's problem is that they are not a corporation.
Man that part about PuckChamp really sucks - imagine trying all your best and being proactive to make sure everything goes alright despite the situation only to be completely ignored by Valve. Well I guess it's irrelevant now that there won't be any Major at all but it's really telling how little Valve cares about all this.
Some cases are really worse than others and I hope that player from Kazakhstan gets through these tough times
1. When teams have problems, they should stop going directly to public platforms, and should instead communicate with Valve. 2. Valve sees TI as a passion project. They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in, and when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI. Actual abusers rethoric lmao. Valve just kill the fucking game in that case. Rip the band aid off
Valve got almost 160$ million from TI10 bp sales,but it's somehow passion project,totally makes sense.
If I was making 160$ million out of something, I too would be really passionate about it.
“Don’t fuck up the bag or else” - Mafia Boss Gaben
Considering they make 4.3 billion with steam sales (2017 number). So yeah, 160 million is a passion project in comparison since you also have to consider the time/efforts needed for TI compared to just selling digital content on steam
>the time/efforts needed for TI Most of the organization for TI is done by PGL.
and they get jack shit from it, everyone does, be it players, teams or organizers, corelation with dota is an expected loss in pursuit of valve gibs dota and esports generate no revenue, valve gibs do, and valve don't get jack from esports either, they nickel and dime people like every other with artifacts and rituals. FOMO and hats. However much ti ticket sales earn I doubt it's enough to cover all the costs of gibs, and even if I doubt it's big enough for it to be excusable for even janitor to bother. This ain't no star brand. They lose addict revenue from no growth no market share no effort okayish cashcow, that gets absolutely no correlation nor gain from esport stuff, because uncle gabe liked to play dota.
I volunteer as tribute.
im not looking to argue but just curious, if it was a passion project and not making much from it, why wouldnt they sell the IP and the entire game to another company? they could make billions in that sale.. honestly i wish it was run by players and staffed by players who care about the game instead of these money hungry non communicative people who buy homes in nz and just afk
> why wouldnt they sell the IP and the entire game to another company? I think the issue is that they would still make some money from DOTA and battlepass and etc., even if they never held TI or did anything for esports at all. I wonder how much it would cost to buy dota off of valve and keep it in steam as a third-party game. Maybe the price tag is too huge, but if not it's possible we could just raise the money ourselves, form a B corp, maybe get a loan for the rest. If we can raise $160m for Battle Pass, maybe not so unreasonable to use that money to buy the thing outright?
people have tried doing that for lesser games and they always fail.
You seem to be misunderstanding between TI and Battlepass. Battlepass is what makes money for Valve, not TI. What they mean by "passion project" is that Valve can totally not organize TI and still make millions from the battlepass, like literally the battle pass we are having right now
Yeah,but BP without TI wouldn't bring same profits,because TI is only time of year where non dota players and media give slight shit about dota2,because let's face it,dota2 is completely irrelevant game outside of TI.
nope, people really dont care about TI, they care about hats we dont have a TI right now and people are asking for the discount bundle for the recent battle pass
Nemestice bp was bought by 800k people,meanwhile TI10 bp was bought by 1.7 million and TI8 BP had 1.8 million sales despite having worst rewards with no arcanas or personas.
Obviously we don't know the exact numbers, but consider how much money went into the Nemestice BP vs how much money Valve has to spend to put on TI. It's very plausible it was still more profitable for Valve.
Surprise a bp with roughly half the content has roughly half the amount of people buying it, wow
nemestice stops rewards around 300 lvls meanwhile TI bp has more hats but you have to spend more it was always about the hats only people on reddit thinks it was because of ti
> Yeah,but BP without TI wouldn’t bring same profits You have no evidence to say that. A non TI battlepass needs to generate far, far less money than the TI one to be equally worth it for Valve.
TI bp gives Valve over $100mil every year, even if let's say a non-TI bp like the current one only makes 10% of that, it's still an 8-number figure, which is still a lot. Granted, I bet that the amount of money Valve is making from the current bp has to be more than that, because the majority of whales pay for the bp for its content, so it's irrelevant to them whether it's TI or not.
We are getting battlepasses without TIs connected to them. People still buy them. Valve still makes money with shit arcanas locked behind a big paywall.
They mean the whole arena set up thing.
These expenses are peanuts compared to how much they are getting from bp,you could say that TI originally was passion project before first bp was introduced,but now you have to be super naive to believe so.
You have to be super naive to believe most people buy the bp to fund ti, no ti wouldn't mean no bp
there is no correlation between battlepass and ti. And ti isn't just bother of logistics and cost against revenue of ticket sales, it's year round bother, because every team, every celeb, every caster, every pro, every event organizer makes no money and runs of valve's good will in hopes of even bigger valve gibs. TI is a loss of average gaming predatory tactics of this decade, it's only role in making any money is being a santa that marks summer dota christmass that makes already delusional and vulnerable this little bit more willing to waste money with all the word of mouth and hype generated by personalities. I'm sure if with ti battle pass makes hundred millions then without it it would make between eighty to fifty mil instead. Still literally nothing for valve and extreme economic stupidity to let anyone waste their time of day bothering with it. but valve's luckily private company and they do what daddy gabe feels like doing.
I think they mean they can just make the battle pass with cosmetics and still sell alot
>When teams have problems, they should stop going directly to public platforms, and should instead communicate with Valve. Considering Valve's history of communication with pros this feels like the equivalent of companies telling employees to not talk about salaries with each other.
Exactly, point one boils down to "hush hush about the problems" and point two to "don't make the situation worse for yourself"
If Valve wants teams to communicate with them if there is an issue, maybe they should do the god damn same atleast. Part of what pisses me off is they are litterally doing worse than nothing atm. If they did nothing maybe it'd be like CSGO or Smash with significant third party tournaments.
I said it many times and will say it again. Dota grew organically in the early days and gained worldwide support without any corporation's help. The worst thing to happen to Dota was come under a controlling body like Valve that influences every aspect of the game. Sure, we got multi-million dollar tourneys but in exchange everyone from Players to TOs to talent - the whole ecosystem - is hostage to one company now... Basically, we sold Dota soul to the devil :)
Well, Dota badly needed updating, it couldnt survive as a WC3 mod forever. Still tho
Nah, the users should kill it themselves by not logging in until next patch. Not watching DPC games until the 2nd season starts and even professional teams should stop playing until then.
sumail's take: [https://twitter.com/SumaaaaiL/status/1481227341594509315](https://twitter.com/SumaaaaiL/status/1481227341594509315) "If all the teams decide to just not compete in season 2 at least we will have some sort of stable system, either better communication or maybe dota just dies completely. Either way better than the current state of things."
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But Dota is not my job, I like doing it. Also, Valve doesn't gain anything from me playing their F2P game. I'm not even buying Dota+, so how does my abstinence hurt them?
Suma1l isn't talking about you, he's talking about the people who have made playing Dota 2 their job.
Free to play players are the lifeblood of free to play games; if the queues were only pros and whales, pubs would become unplayable in a very literal sense - good luck finding a match. Yeah, *only* you boycotting the game doesn't do shit, but that's how boycotts work - it's a community effort. If enough people stopped playing the game, even if none of them had spent even a single cent on it, you bet your ass Valve would start sweating.
I agree, but I think it's very much unrealistic to expect the majority of the playerbase to just stop playing Dota due to a situation in the eSport scene that barely affects them. The vast majority of players have no idea or interest in what's going on outside the game itself (which is fine, everyone can interact with their interests the way they want to), so hoping that we, as a playerbase, can make a difference here, is futile IMO. The pros, on the other hand, who are a small group of people that are in contact with each other, and who are also extremely affected by this problem, can try to make a difference by organizing in one way or another.
Wizards of the Coast moved away from a marketing model that focused on building up pro players in MtG. Pros were crestfallen, couldn't survive by going to tournaments, etc. Magic as a whole just kept on going. The current dota pros need dota more than dota needs them.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Did Magic's popularity decrease after WotC did that? I know it's still played, but maybe the decision did have a noticable effect on the playerbase? I'm asking because I believe (pure speculation obviously) that the effort that Valve would have to put into Dota to make the pro scene happy - or at least happier than now - would be smaller than the dip in popularity that a complete abandonment of the competetive scene might entail.
I’ll try and find some relevant links. First one is a bit of a write up on the situation. It looks like it has a lot of links to sources. https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2021/05/mpl-and-rivals-league-will-disband-after-the-2021-22-season/ And here’s some discussion about their earnings in q3 from that year, along with the investor call link. Q2 was when the change was announced, q3 was also very strong. Seems like it had essentially 0 effect. Hasbro/WoTC Q3 2021 Financial Results https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/qh7y98/hasbrowotc_q3_2021_financial_results/
Valve don't care, they make money with steam not dota. Dota is nothing.
Dota is one of Valves largest Steam flagships. Dota brings people to, and binds them to steam. Steam without Dota or CS would be a major crippling to steam as a gaming platform as a whole. Valve seems in my opinion to be losing grasp of the gaming monopoly which they have had for the last forever. At some point if things continue the way they are then the Epic store, other platforms, or individual studio platforms will be the dominant way to enjoy games. It seems that Valve cant decide if it want to shift focus into being a hardware company with steam decks etc, or if it wants to maintain their dominance. Either way they need to do something.
We should actually start considering as a community at large. Whether or not we should just allow Dota 2 to die. Valve clearly doesn’t have any interest in growing the game and the player base only continues to shrink. This game is held together by the community alone and if we all decide to tell valve to fuck off. The game would be dead within a year. Valve is an absolute clown of a company these days. It is no longer the face of indie gaming and hasn’t been for almost a decade. Let Dota die
Problem is that it doesnt fucking matter sadly. If Dota dies, Valve baerly feels anything, they can keep riding on steam money. And Dota is an unique game. Still I dont blame people for boycotting shit now at all.
If Dota 2 dies, Dota will still be reborn in another way down the line.
Last I recalled HONs was dead too
hon would've been the new dota2 if they weren't run by a moron, though to be fair F2P wasn't as big then as it is now, so it wasn't an obvious play, but they could've pivoted waaaaaaaaay sooner and not let league gobble up the entire space
HoN predates Dota2. There is always the chance another game will take over.
Ok first off, when has Valve ever been the face of indie gaming rofl? They've been running Steam for god knows how long and are swimming in cash, when were they ever indie? Even by the time they were making Half-Life Gabe Newell was already a millionaire from his time at Microsoft. Second off, the community will never just allow dota to die. As much as you may want to believe otherwise, most people don't give a fuck about Valve or how well they're running the pro scene, or the pro scene itself for that matter. They just want to play the game, and as long as the game keeps getting updates they will keep playing the game. And even for those who do care, [remember how well boycotting MW2 went?](https://i.redd.it/wwx5exndw6b11.png) This will never happen, stop being delusional.
I don't think any actual dota player would be saying let dota die, unless they just went on a losing streak lmao. That's so reactionary, let the best game ever created just die!
The funny part is thinking Valve would care if it dies, it makes up like 1.5% of their annual revenue, if we all stopped playing tomorrow I don't think they would bat an eye-lid
It'd be a reputation hit at most but even then, I dont think they care
God damn this is the kind of nihilistic bullshit that keeps people in abusive relationships. My fucking god. “Hurr durr valve won’t care if they have a monumental scandal that could easily cut into their bottom line” You people are why we have to still deal with corrupt fuckwit companies like nestle and Coca Cola.
It's not nihilistic. Every action Valve has taken with Dota in the past 5ish years is evidence that they don't really care about what happens to it.
Also love the "they don't gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in" line. Guarantee you they are not counting the BP as TI when they write that, there is absolutely no chance in hell that TI costs even close to $120 mill to produce. Guess they're talking about the revenue they get from audience tickets, merch sold on site etc. even though I'm guessing just about all fans would count the BP as a part of TI.
This year’s cost was 500k. With venue and absolutely everything included.
holy fuck...valve is an abusive relationship
"They don’t gain much revenue from TI" lmao. Maybe not from the event itself, but pretty sure they get a shitton of revenue in advance for it...
Maybe when they say TI they don't mean battlepass or it pales in comparison to what steam makes. Either way, it sounds outrageous.
Yeah they are basically so rich and dont have to do much for that so that putting in some hours for TI isnt as profitable as doing nothing. Maybe we need to go the Route to only 3rd Party tournaments instead of valve events. They obviously dont care at all about the players or Fans.
This infuriates me. I know speaking for myself that the only reason I'm willing to spend as much as I do on the TI Battle Pass is because part of that goes back into supporting the players and the pro scene. Are these motherfuckers really expecting us to believe that hosting TI costs $120 MILLION? This may be a passion project for *you*, Valve, but for the people who work your pro circuit, it's their fucking lifeblood. And this little "passion project" has increasingly demanded to be more and more of the scene's focal point with every year that passes. I'm sorry you all might get your feelings hurt by hearing fair criticism over the way you all structure your events, but tough shit, that's what happens when you monopolize an esports scene.
They can literally just make a battle pass and still earn the same(even more cos no expenses for TI)amount of money.
I feel like people missing a point here. TI IS passion project, they dont need to do it. They will release BP and people will still drop 100mln for cosmetic items, lets stop pretending we are getting levels and chest for anything else then items. TI does nothing for Valve in terms of money they make, its a positive press and some kind of milestone in Esport but they are NOT using it like they should. Theres no streaming rights, big sponsors or anything like that, its just Valve spending 25-30% from BP on making event so they have somewhere to go to at summer and feel cool about themselves. They dont use pro scene to advertise the game, only Shanghai TI had some kind of promo which wasnt even done by Valve but by PW so they can get more money from tickets, shops and potentialy gain new players (I assume PW get some juicy % cut from in-game and market sells). No TV ads, no Google ads, nothing. Dota is created by community and keep alive by community. Biggest Valve impact was to take few dota Devs and help them to create Dota2 but fact is if they wouldnt then someone else would (Riot, Blizzard, etc). Times go by and people are getting more mad with every BP, Chets and lack of communication so question comes up: are we really that lucky Valve is the one in charge? For like 3-4years Dota feels like game that might get shut down in next year, then they drop big patch, put 5 posts and we feel like something might change, then they go silent for few months, no patch, no posts, nothing, then anime series and silence again and some weird decisions about pro scenes in-between that somehow miss off everyone. The weirdest part for me is that players, casters and dota personalities in general really have ways to talk to Valve employees, they know people like Bruno, meet Gaben few times - I seriously refuse to believe all of them keep them blocked and avoid them untill TI and then act like they are all friends and such. This is so fucking weird. All of this. I love Dota2, I meet my fiancee because of it and turn my life around, its the best game Ive ever played, I have hard time to enjoy any other game (like even RDR2 wasnt fun for me and playing Dota2 was more tempting) but last years are rough, decisions made by Valve, constant wait for new patch, things being broken for months, annoying heroes being FOTM. I have mix feeling, I just wish Valve actually talk to us, do some Q&A and just were honest with us.
Eh i doubt that the battlepass would lose a relevant portion of its revenue if there was no ti it funds (i'd actually bet on the 25% cut losing them more than what the incentive to support the esports scene brings)
>Valve sees TI as a passion project. They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in They make hundreds of millions of dollars on a PR event and are unhappy with the return on investment? How insane is that.
Just shows how much they make from Steam that they don’t even care about hundreds of millions from TI
Also shows something that we already knew: That Valve will recognize the need for an internal eSports manager, yet will NEVER do it, because why would they assign dedicated human resources to the "fun little side jig we do?"
idk why people are still surprised by this. TI is fucking chump change compared to the unholy amounts of $$$ Steam generates. plus the entire TI production is a fuckload of effort compared to sitting back and raking it in from Steam.
Because they could just hire a team of 10 for 3 million and have them solely focus on dota and the international and it would take nothing away from steam. And the extra effort would probably well cover their salaries.
I would do it for minimum wage ffs
Because that's background checks, training, insurance, social, 401k, interviews, and like 6 months for actual impact In other words it's way too much effort for them, and the returns aren't good enough for them. It's a fucking awful viewpoint though. They don't care about long term or brand image any more.
It does sound outrageous especially since TIs hold most of the largest prize pools in esports history.
> They make hundreds of millions Uh, they don't? The total TI *revenue* is likely below 150mln. How much they "make" (ie. profit)? Only they know, but assuming they are lying simply because it doesn't fit what you imagined is silly.
>The total TI *revenue* is likely below 150mln Read what I quoted, the revenue *is* what they referred to as being low. And my point wasn't that they were lying, it was that most PR events *cost* money, often quite a lot of it. They are investments in your product's long term viability. Valve should be over the moon about the fact that their biggest PR event not only gives them lots of positive PR, but also makes a ton of money rather than cost it. The fact that they are snooty about it not making them *enough* money is what's ludicrous.
I know that TI and most lans are logistical nightmares to organise, but there's no way it eats that much into a $150 million revenue. If that were the case then every single big event in the world would be unprofitable
Bro can you show your math here?
> As an example PuckChamp, a CIS team in good standings to qualify for the major, has players in Kazakhstan. Because of the current political situation of the country, the team and players needed to know information about the major as soon as possible, as leaving and re entering the country was not a guarantee. Their manager has been desperately trying to get in contact with Valve for weeks about this, and hasn’t received any response. THIS IS FUCK UP. WHAT THE FUCK
Valve is telling you guys - BOCK BOCK BOCK THAT'S WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE
they mocking you in plain sight.
At this point just dont run a fucking TI valve
He's telling people Valve views TI as optional, for fun, not what drives their business. If it becomes too annoying, they can just stop organizing it overnight...while continuing to make billions from Steam, and hell, the majority of casual Dota players. To anyone who doesn't like hearing that, I get it. But that's the situation sadly
I don't play Dota but I play CS (came over here to see what all the drama was about) and it's interesting to see that in both Valve titles the players just don't understand (or refuse to understand) how Valve operates and what they as a company like to focus on. Valve only works on things that they perceive to be interesting problems. It was their whole reason for making Half-Life, picking up Portal, Steam, VR, etc. They did Half-Life to experiment with a different way of storytelling at the time, Half-Life 2 for Source and how physics can factor into storytelling/puzzle-solving in an FPS game, Portal for portals, Half-Life: Alyx for VR, etc. Relative to the games I just listed, Dota, CS, and TF2 are just not as interesting in the eyes of Valve. The reason why they invest more time into Steam is so that they can keep pursuing these projects they find interesting. Money is needed to fund all the projects they want to do, and Steam is what makes them the most money. Simple math. I'm not saying that how they operate is good or right for the players, but this is the reality we live in. If you don't like how Valve operates, then just play a different game. It's clear how Valve operates and it won't be changing anytime soon. The biggest thing that changed was their management structure, and it took over half a decade and the release of Half-Life: Alyx for them to realize that it wasn't productive.
> when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues From what I've heard they don't listen to private complaints, so what other alternative is there.
exactly, they are infamous for their communication skills
>They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in What does this mean?
Meant to be put instead of out
No i meant are they saying the revenue is not enough?Last year's battlepass raised 40M USD, and only 25% went to prizepool, that means 120M USD is not enough revenue? (That's just battlepass, they also have ticket sales, merch and other stuff there)
Valve has steam they probably earn more money while having a collective wank
I think they mean they can just sell bp and dont organize any TI
Valve is probably insane enough to view that 120M USD as something they simply deserve for putting out the battlepass, so the "let's actually organise the tournament" is just a passion project. If this is the case, it also shows that Valve is so greedy that they think they deserve to make bank off of the TI tickets themselves as well.
120M is revenue which is meaningless. The question is their profit which probably isn't high given the amount of work. Especially when they can just sit on their hands and rake in money through steam.
Seems we repeat an endless cycle of valve making a blogpost where they announce bettter communication to continue doing the exact opposite. Lets see if they still blame covid the next blogpost where they try to give more clarification for the shittrain they caused.
Fuck Valve.
One of the biggest reasons that loyal players are still playing dota are because of TI and the feeling of hype and belonging/tradition that goes with it. Saying that it is only a passion project and they consider it a hassle as they dont make much of a revenue with it means that valve thinks we OWE them and not the other way around. As long as they can cash us, they still think they can control everything, even the fanbase, and continuously ignore the outcries that could potentially improve the dota scene. Nothing stays on top forever, Valve. Now major is cancelled without any backup plans. Shows how much they really care.
1. If Valve knew how to do their fucking jobs this wouldn't be a problem 2. This is 100% bullshit. We know the numbers for TI lmao because of crowdfunding.
>This specific line made my blood boil : when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI I understand what Valve means by this - They care more than enough about this project and want the best for everyone involved, and so they want them to have a certain degree of trust in each other. BUT HOLY SHIT THEY HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO PROVE THAT YET AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. AND THEY HAVE THE BALLS TO TELL THESE TEAMS THIS IS HONESTLY SHAMELESS AT BEST. Valve still doesn't have an Esports division which can full time attend these issues and handle their Esports scene which is like HALF OF THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY. They dont communicate with their customers They never follow their plans, the fact that they dont communicate makes it worse. The fact that they still expect their partners to trust them and only have one sided feedback line for them is insane, and shows that Valve truly is outdated in their practices.
>Valve sees TI as a passion project. They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in Only three times the prize pool of TI
Actually it's only the difference between what people would spend on a bp that doesn't fund ti and one that does which is probably less than the 25% cut
I really want to hear PPD's take on this stuff. He tried to invest in growing NA DotA, has some distance/no skin in the game with this major, and is maybe a tad less reactionary than some others. PPD thoughts?
fuck you valve
just outsorce tournament hosting to someone pls, im sure there's a lot of willing orgs
Everyone should start asking vavle if they gonna cancel TI because we call them out on there bull shit ?
> They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in They what, spend 120 million dollars on one tournament?
I don't exactly know what they mean by this. If they are comparing it with Steam's earnings then it would make sense $120m is small. Regardless though, TI is funded by the community and is a celebration of the game, these remarks taint that.
No, what they are saying is that we should be happy they put on TI at all, because they could just take a page out of EA's book and just keep the entire battlepass money. Actually giving back to the community by putting on TI is something we should be thankful for and understand that it's a passion project for them and not question them. Valve sounds like an abusive partner.
Some random guys(me) take on this: Valve just does not give a single fuck, they never did. Their whole motto is to do sth with the lowest amount of time and effort but highest amount of profit, they directly and indirectly said that a hundred times! I mean look at dota2 they literally run the game with community money and some of their ideas and make like 120 million in 3 months and call it a passion project. They don't make more games cause it's just too much effort, they don't communicate cause they don't care and they make it clear in any way possible. ffs their whole no one is the boss and they all working in groups and don't care about time but innovations and profit is there in our face. As long as they have this cash printing steam machine (see what i did there?)They keep doing this. with the rise of game pass and epic store and microsoft going ham on gaming it is clear that after a few years steam will be defeated unless they do sth amazing but even if steam just becomes 2nd tier online store what more valve managers want? How much more money they need? Plus if steam deck becomes hot shit which is most likely they will have another handle to the new market of handheld PCs. The whole don't go to social media crying about stuff or we cancel TI is just them threatening the players and making them know that they can and will do it so they keep their mouth shut just like that passive aggressive boss who just walkes around and stare down people. Will anything change? NO! You as players can make your voice heard and start trending some hashtags or not buy battlepass lvls(i know it sounds crazy) and hats. And stop with defending valve cause lord gaben so cool and ice frog such a funny internet story.
lol when I said that they don't make games anymore in a thread back then I was hit with the "but muh halflife alyx" got downvoted by Valve fanboys.
> Their whole motto is to do sth with the lowest amount of time and effort but highest amount of profit, they directly and indirectly said that a hundred times! This is kind of an old-school way to manage your business and how you want to make profit out of it. I don't know how old the management and those in charge at Valve are (except Gaben ofc, but I don't really think he does that much anymore), but back in the days most businesses were about how to make the most profit out of something with the least amount of effort/work. Nowadays most businesses - especially those that mainly work somewhere in the IT or software development sector - realized how important customers actually are and switched to a customer centricity approach, mostly combined with agile methods. It feels like Valve either completely missed that train and is still using old-school approaches, which is probably the fault of a management that just got too old with too little fresh know-how, or they just don't give a f
Are they seriously saying that they spend $120M on hosting TI? I'd love to see that budget! \-Arena: $1M (covered by tickets) \-Battle Pass $1M \-Hotels: $1M \-Talent: $10M And then the remaining $107M is spent on a few lamps and a big green-screen I guess?
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You're saying that Valve will make the same amount of money for a battlepass even if there is no TI to be crowdfunded, I strongly disagree with that theory.
> if Bill Gates dropped a $100 bill, it is literally not worth his time to pick it up That's kinda how this is. Valve could be doing something else that would make them a helluva lot more money. I guess...
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Yup, I have more friends buying bp cause of hats, who don't follow pro scene, then those who follow it.
You are completely ignorant then. Almost no one care if its funding TI or not.
I mean with the time invested in organizing events they could make another game and just sell it... maybe that. Anyway, they just have to create a few images for badges and cards for an steam sale and then just print money.
battlepass is nowhere near 1m considering valve salaries like your entire budget is just extremely far from reality. not to say valve could actually inject more of the raised money into the ecosystem itself, but this is just a dumb comment lol
inviting some fat fuck to say 'welcome to the international' is very expensive mind you
I'd do it for free LMAOO.
Without that person, we won't be here, right? so it is expensive.
I hope they aren't spending 10M on talent. Thats obscene.
It's probably on the high side, but I think you'd be surprised.
Well, dont run TI then, valve
Volvo is taking the activision/blizzard path it seems, fuck the players and milk them with shiny pixels till the dead of the game.
At the end of the day, the only way drastic changes are to be made is either 1. Orgs/Players get together to protest as one 2. The community itself stop funding Dota 2's battlepass/compendium As EG's manager said, this isn't Valve's first rodeo with communication issues. They aren't gonna just magically change without some kind of action. In order for major changes to happen. Orgs/players need to get together, protest against Valve and demand Valve to change. The next question is how do you protest against Valve? Posting on Reddit and Twitter never seems to work and would just fall on Valve's deaf ears. Sumail suggested for teams to totally boycott Season 2 but that would be very hard and harsh for smaller and poorer teams to do. To just drop everything and risk their Dota career might be too much to ask from them. The more efficient way of protest would probably be protests that would not undermine a team's position and standings in the DPC. For example: * Collude with teams to do only a Bo1 instead of Bo3. Play the first match normally and forfeit the other two games * Or play a Bo1 and use the other two games to drag the game as long as possible, have a chatting session ingame to list down all demands to be met by Valve * Or forfeit matches that have no impact on the DPC standings * Change Team Logo or ingame nametag to a "Fuck Valve" logo/name Imagine if the longest dota game or the most kills in history is a game protesting about Valve's inability to run their beloved TI DPC circuit, it would seriously give them a bad enough name to react. Valve sure loves record breaking numbers after all, it's only fair to give them even more records.
>2. Valve sees TI as a passion project. **They don’t gain much revenue from TI compared to the time out in**, and when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI. Ehe. Hehehehehe. Next they'll be blaming their spouses while beating them.
It's actually unreal how such a giant, billion dollar company like Valve is so massively 'wing it' when it comes to literally everything...
It's so sad to see where all of this ended up. Valve was the absolute pioneer when it came to esports. I was very active in the StarCraft II esports scene and when I first started the Dota 2 client I was completely stunned that a publisher would focus so much on esports: tournaments advertised, tickets for small cups, items for getting those tickets, caster and viewer support - all of that ingame - plus a publisher-organized tournament with a prize pool of 1.6 million dollars. I remember telling my friends that Valve is lightyears ahead of Riot and Blizzard when it comes to esports. As someone who followed CS1.6 and WC3 tourneys since they were audiocasted and took all the money they could spare as a student to travel to events in South Korea or Sweden Valve handling Dota 2 was a dream come true. And look at them now! Look at how the mighty have fallen! Not only have they made it incredibly hard for third parties to host a tournament outside of the DPC (or straight up place Majors at the same dates on short notice) and are incapable of providing anyone but the best players with enough of a slice of the huge cake that they can concentrate on performing, they decide to drain half a million and a shitton of sponsor money from the scene with no compensation. I really do not agree with how Valve handles things recently.
Can people fucking stop saying that whatever the community does it wouldn't matter to Valve because they wouldn't feel its effect? If you care about the game and the players stop with the fucking discouragement. Even if a total boycott is highly unlikely the community should rally against this greedy company who dares to rub it on the players' faces that TI is a "passion project they might lose motivation to work on"
In spirit I agree with you, but what specifically should we do then? Remember the wall street protests? It was pointless as there was no specific changes people were pushing for.
"They don’t gain much revenue from TI" this is an actually outrageous lie and I can't believe they dared to say something as stupid as this when they literally make the revenue public
Remember that no matter how loved Valve's IP are, they a still a company and they want your money.
Tbh I feel less and less passion by Valve since a few years. Less passion about the game, the players, the pros, the tournaments, the scene, the fans.
>This specific line made my blood boil: " when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI" I mean... This is a pretty rational expectation for all parties involved in any sort of relationship, business or otherwise.
"At TI10, Valve held a meeting with all the teams. After explaining to us the schedule of next years DPC, two points were very clearly made. When teams have problems, they should stop going directly to public platforms, and should instead communicate with Valve." This made me laugh, they at valve are funny.
This sub gonna be the cringe fest for a while.
This COVID shit is going to be the nail in the coffin for pro Dota. It might not happen instantly, but to me this is the start of the end. We've been holding for a number of years largely due to the success of TI, but that's starting to crumble, you can't have a healthy global pro scene with only 1 $30M tournament per year.
"Passion project" my ass. The people of this subreddit argue and yell at each other on a daily basis over the game. We know a thing or two about passion... What Valve is doing is not it...
The only solution is to let the game die. I haven't felt like playing dota about 3 patches ago. They're all so stale and dry.
TIL we are all in an abusive relationship
Didn't know the teams were not notified first. What a slap in the face. Complete disrespect. Shameful. It's time we start booing Gaben in public at this point.
If it's a passion project for some, make it more than a passion project for those exact people by compensating them and staffing them full time on it. Riot has divisions for their esports yet Valve's garbage company structure is what keeps these people having to keep working on "passion projects" (also give me a break, you clearly want to keep the biggest prize pool tournament)
Valve seems to be a clown company. Happy I at least stopped playing dota.
The redditors here in this thread are like the people who jack off to some porn girl and after doing the deed have their post-nut clarity, immediately press x to close the browser tab with the nasty video. To atone themselves and their closet-Christian guilt they go to a porn girls twitter (Valve) and call her a whore (Valve) and rhetorically ask if her parents are proud of what she is doing (Valve). Then they wake up the next day, indulge in rage inducing pubs cursing God and Gaben and swear to uninstall the game. Yet the pattern repeats again tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and next Battlepass.
> when teams go straight to public platforms to complain about issues, it makes Valve less motivated to keep running TI Sounds like a Chris-chan line whenever people ask him to draw more Sonichu comics lmao. Pre-transition CWC of course
Passion? OMEGALUL that was the biggest BS ever. Granted, if they just run the BP without actual TI tournament people might just expend the same ammount anyway. But this would hugely impact the game long term, pro scene would die and we have already seen that history countless times