“GIVE DIRETIDE” and memorable stories in the Dota 2 community

It’s ok to make money, but it’s not okay to lose trust

Before and after The International 2013, tournament organizers were looking for ways to increase ticket sales on Dota TV because tickets were the direct source of profit. As a result, they included additional skins created by paid workshoppers. And they get paid very well. This method is so popular that it has become a common practice among tournament organizers.

This encourages Dota 2 fans to buy more tickets. While Dota TV itself wasn’t very popular at the time, the addition of the item in the inventory was enough to convince them to shell out $10 for a ticket.

Profits increase further after organizations start contributing a portion of revenue to profits. For most popular tournaments this will double or even double the original prize money. The 2013 MLG Dota 2 Championships was the first opening tournament for the following events to follow.

Clearly, this is a win-win scenario. Viewers receive unique items and bonus points, while players, organizers, the item design team, and Valve also reap additional profits. But then, a few groups decided to take advantage of the system for their own gain.

In September 2013, designer Thiago Vidotto, who designed the item for season 4 of the Dota 2 Premier League, complained about not being paid by the commissioner, DPL management team leader and director Laurent “Ange “Blum. The standard work for organizations then was to add the design team to the pay list immediately after the item was put into the game and to give the exact percentage of the profits to be shared. However, Ange informs Vidotto that some provisions of the contract make this impossible. The designer accepted this at first but he became more and more suspicious as the money he received later became less and less than what he should have received.

Angie tries to hide the actual number of tickets sold, and says they are having a hard time selling tickets. However, the amount of the total prize was made public, making concealment unsuccessful. Vidotto still couldn’t contact Blum to ask for the rest of the money, so he decided to go public with his story.

Valve has acted very strongly in response to this complaint, permanently banning Ange from any Dota-related activities and removing all Dota 2 Premier League tickets from its store. Angie denied the accusation to the end, saying that Valve was afraid to compete with him, but Angie’s reputation before that was also not good. Everyone knows that when Blum was running MYM, he stole the team’s The International 2011 prize money and the members were forced to take it to court to get it back.

_◕ VOLVO Give DIRETIDE

In October 2013, Dota 2 fans eagerly waited for Valve to bring Diretide back. Although there was no announcement, people believed that Valve wanted to surprise. When October 31 arrived, nothing happened except for the appearance of some skins.

This news is really not good for the community. Fans wanted Diretide and they were willing to do anything to get it like hosting the biggest online flash mob in Dota history.

Things started happening on Reddit and many Dota community websites, but Valve continued to ignore it as if nothing had happened. This is like ‘adding fuel to the fire’ and made the Dota 2 community decide to make a big deal, spam “༼ つ ◕_◕ VOLVO Give DIRETIDE” on the Volvo car manufacturer’s social page. So much so that the official Volvo account had to ask Valve to stop ignoring it and give everyone the Diretide they wanted. Whether Volvo knows what Diretide is is currently a mystery.

Barack Obama was also targeted by the community, along with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the FBI. A few people decided to call Matthew “Cyborgmatt” Bailey, who was very close to Valve at the time but it only made Bailey more uncomfortable and even intended to call the police. The flash mob was so big that Forbes, along with many other journalists, decided to put it on their news site.

It wasn’t until a week later that Valve representatives decided to speak to the community. They said there was an update in the works, and that’s why Valve didn’t have time to get the Halloween event on schedule. They demanded that the “innocent car company be left alone”. The game maker promises that Diretide will be released in the next few weeks.

On November 14, the Three Spirits update was released, including the in-game event. On December 9, the game added a ranking system. For many people, this is a new source of motivation for them to get into Dota 2.

2014 brought a lot of changes in the game as well as in professional competition. Thanks to the revenue from in-game items, the prize money in the tournament is always hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. In October, Valve started rolling out more in-game events. The January event focused on the Skeleton King character being replaced by Wraith King because of an infringement complaint from Blizzard. The next event, New Bloom Festival, exclusively for the Lunar New Year, 5 more heroes have been added: Ember Spirit, Earth Spirit, Terrorblade, Phoenix and Legion Commander.

The International 2014 prize pool continues to break records with the amount of $ 11 million. Valve doesn’t think they can get an extra $6 million from players, as that’s the highest target on compendium’s bonus list. This barrier was broken only in May, forcing game makers to add some new ideas.

Dota 2 Reborn

After TI 4, Valve announced plans to bring Dota 2 to a new engine: Source 2. This also allows free maps to be uploaded to the Dota 2 Workshop. The new Hero Oracle was also added later that year. In addition, 2 Arcana items are also released, for Shadow Fiend and Phantom Assassin (PA). Arcana PA owners will be able to participate in a separate in-game event.

In February, Perfect World – the Chinese publisher of Dota 2 – held the Dota 2 Asia Championships 2015, marking the arrival of another prestigious tournament. Before DAC, there were many organizations competing to see who had the most important tournament after TI. By 2015, DAC surpassed all of them.

The original prize pool of $250,000 has grown to $3 million from ticket sales from Dota TV, although the China region has not received much favor in previous tournaments. The New Bloom Festival starts right after the DAC is completed. At the moment, the number of dota players is extremely high, at one point reaching 1.25 million, a record that has not been broken by any game to this day.

The success of the DAC was noticed by Valve. In April 2015, the company introduced a new tournament system that will be implemented next season. In addition to The International, Valve decided to add three more Major tournaments and no longer accept items from selling Dota TV tournament tickets from 3rd party organizers.

Dota 2 Reborn entered beta on June 12, 2015, but it didn’t receive the warm welcome Valve expected. Players are so used to the old interface that they are quite shy with the new interface, partly because Reborn is still unstable and constantly crashes. The only thing that incentivizes players to try out the new interface is to increase TI5’s compendium coin receipts by 50%, making coin leveling much faster.

3 Majors weren’t the only new thing in the 2015/16 season, as well as roster lockups and transfers were introduced. The 4-part structure of the Dota 2 season is not only for the pros (3 majors ,1 TI) but also for players. Before each Major, Valve will release a Battle Pass, whose owners will have to complete quests to level up and receive items and cards as rewards. They can use it to create their own virtual team in that tournament.

Then each year, the TI awards are more than the previous period. 2016 is no exception, but the difference is not too much compared to 2015: “only” 2 million dollars more.

Dota 3 and Dota 2 Allstars

After TI6, Dota 2 seems to have stalled. The balance in the game hasn’t changed much, although it’s still far from ideal. There was a big patch on August 23, with the arrival of Underlord – the last hero missing from DotA AllStars – and an expanded feature of the game’s skins. Dota 2 continued at 6.88 until The Boston Major 2016 ended in December. After that, IceFrog announced that version 7.00 was coming.

7.00 changes the game a lot, new skins, new hero, Monkey King. Furthermore, the arrival of shrines and talent trees changed the way the game was played a lot. Some people even jokingly called this “Dota 3”.

7.00 completely changes the balance in the game. Both fans and pro players have to spend months to learn and fully adapt to Dota 2. The old knowledge becomes meaningless and everything has to be recalculated from scratch.

Patch 7.07, released in May, is considered to be the most balanced patch in Dota 2 history. Each team has its own way of playing and using unique strategies based on many different heroes. There are almost no useless heroes or first forced heroes in Dota 2.

Furthermore, the tournament system was once again changed. Valve decided to organize The International on its own, while the rest of the Majors will be handled by a third party. To make it more profitable for 3rd parties, a clear season schedule along with double prize money and a detailed TI8 invite system was announced.

Like previous seasons, the first tournaments used the old patch. 7.07 was released after the first Major ended. The update introduces a new ranking system, fixes many heroes, changes the algorithm of armor and heals, adds 2 new heroes and a few things to add to the base stats. Pro players have to work extra hard to figure out 7.07’s meta. Meanwhile, normal players like us are waiting for the Dota season to start under this new matchmaking system.

Source: cybersport