Why is esports killing Dota 2?

Esports is recognized as a mainstream sport in many countries. This is not too surprising, because the main reason why esports has become more popular is because of the audience that loves and plays the game. Like traditional sports, everyone likes to follow the achievements of other players (players).

Major tournaments often gather in packed stadiums with millions of fans watching from afar. Like the big sports, huge bonuses are also present in esporrts.

For example, The International is the biggest prize money tournament in the esports industry, with over $40 million USD in 2020. Valve doesn’t take this money from sponsors. Unlike rival games, they take their bonuses from the players themselves. In short, the bounty is almost crowdfunding.

Epic Games is also actively involved in esports development. In 2019, Fortnite hosted the tournament to $10 million USD.

Riot Games organizes major League of Legends tournaments every year with prize money up to $5 million USD.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is Valve’s other esports, with $1 million USD in prize money each, held each season. But in return, the salary of CSGO players is often higher than other esports games.

Where does the money for esports come from?

With the explosive growth of esports, a lot of organizations want to participate in organizing the tournament. Major tournaments are often organized by several companies at the same time. These organizations include computer hardware and peripheral manufacturers, game publishers, media, game developers, bookmakers, etc.

All of these organizations are interested in the results of the advertisements they run on the official broadcast channels. And from the Twitch data, you can see the results are very optimistic.

While Dota 2 has the largest interactive audience in esports, the game is slowly losing interest from the players themselves.

How does Esports impact Dota 2?

How is esports, which makes games more popular, slowly take away interest from casual players in the game?

According to previous analysis in Dota 2, when a new player enters the game, they often face a lot of difficulties, such as lack of instructions, toxic community and the length of a match, etc.

The point is, esports directly affects the overall game development process. Valve has invested all its efforts to organize The International. This decision made the game extremely popular. By 2016, Dota 2 had reached the highest player threshold.

For more than 6 years, after the first The International, Dota 2 has inspired many gamers to become esports players, because the prize money from a tournament is too big. But this approach, to promote the game through esports, has lost a lot of new players at the time than now.

Will Partin, Data and Community analyst, said: “At the current momentum, the real beneficiaries in Dota are the top teams and Valve. Everyone else – the tournament organizers, the teams, and all the other players have to fight to stay alive, or quit the game.”

In addition, joining the esports segment in the game is not easy at all. Esports organizations usually only recruit members from a few good players at the top of the regional rankings. And this number has not yet reached 1.7% of the total, so the path to becoming an esports player is not for everyone.

If this trend continues, will Dota 2 close?

Esports is the only thing that has been taken care of in Dota 2. Since 2016, Valve has almost stopped providing new content to all players.

Sets, major updates, new mechanics, compendium (books) – all of this is done to make sure the main event of the year is a success! The International gets all the attention in Dota 2. And if this continues, the game will probably only be played by 500 people – people playing Dota 2 just for the audience to enjoy.

What about the remaining 99% of gamers who play for fun? Because not every Dota 2 player wants to get into esports.

In recent years, Dota 2 players have continuously witnessed many changes in the game’s fundamentals: hero talent, fountain, outpost, aghanim shard. The things that made Dota gameplay difficult, are now even harder. They make Dota 2 only mean win or lose. This is only pleasing to the eye, but for many Dota gamers, they have a lot of trouble adapting to ggame. Clement Puppey Ivanov – Team Secret captain said the following:

“The more difficult the game, the more picky players are.”

If Valve continues to ignore users, sooner or later it will affect tournament viewers as well.

Valve has repeatedly said that they will start paying more attention to the players, not just esports. The legendary Diretide event and patrol system have rekindled hope in some players. This is clearly shown by the increase in players in the graph below. But slow response from Valve, as well as the lack of regular game events make players more frustrated.

Not to mention, valve has continuously released patches over the years to make Dota more of a team game. This solution succeeds and delivers memorable moments from the major tournaments. But that doesn’t work for casual players. The original Dota 2 did not teach new players well the gameplay and the concept of “teamplay”. Experienced players don’t even forgive the smallest mistakes from new players. This makes things even worse. Most players insult their teammates but do not give good advice. In addition, the concept of “teamplay” also changes the most essential thing of a game (game), which is entertainment and fun!

Don’t forget one of the current problems of the game is the bootster (players using the game account have a rank that is not right for their level and ability). With the introduction of the Overwatch system, players had to troubleshoot this on their own. However, because this system is abused by players and the punishment is not severe, it does not have a big impact. Yaroslav “NS” Kuznetsov, analyst and commentator, predicts in the podcast “Storm Snails” that the game will no longer have an influx of new players and the number of players in the game from violators will gradually decrease.

“Valve needs to ban all boossters, ban all smurfs, ban all account buyers, etc. All accounts detected and penalized by the system will reduce the player count in the game. Not half, but maybe 5-10% of players will get banned. They may quit the game. To be able to continue banning like this, Valve needs to add new players to make up for that loss.”

Why doesn’t Valve take care of these issues?

Working for Valve can be any programmer’s dream, but is it really true?

In 2017, New Employee Handbook was added in Valve system. Many points in this Handbook say that all employees in the company are fair and that no one is ranked higher than anyone else.

“Valve is a flat system. In short, we have no management and no one has to ‘report’ to anyone. We have a founder/president, but even he is not your manager. The company gives you the right to run it yourself.”

So who is the project manager and why does Valve often fire employees?

Morf-designer is a journalist and a blogger. He investigated and discovered that Valve did not incentivize employees to fix bugs, as it was not profitable for the company. And if the fix doesn’t bring in the money, the employee will be fired.

In addition, according to former Valve employee Richard Geldreich, employees in the company should listen to ideas from shareholders and senior partners. These people will suggest ways that can generate profits for the company. And in this case, the employee will not be fired. This isn’t necessarily too bad, Valve can keep firing employees until someone comes up with an idea that makes the company profitable.

Quite interesting isn’t it! So who came up with the idea of ​​​​launching Battle Pass 2020 even though The International was not held? We can be sure that this person won’t get fired by making that “wise” decision.

According to hawk

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