‘Dota 2’ Players Rebel Against Recent Facebook Announcement
Dota 2 is facing a massive backlash from fans of the popular multiplayer battle arena video game. The anger comes from fans who heard the recent announcement by ESL that revealed a new exclusive stream of the official ESL tournaments on Facebook. Polygon reported that the big problem here was that some of the top Twitch streamers ended up banned for their hosting of “unauthorized streams.” Things progressed to the point where the official Dota 2 Reddit AMA with Ulrich Schulze turned into an apology for the miscommunication with gamers and their attitudes on Twitter when dealing with the frustration of the players.
What Are Dota 2 Players Protesting?
According to Polygon, the fans and gamers are planning to boycott the entire ESL tournament that will air exclusively on Facebook. The Dota 2 tournament started this week in Malaysia, and technical problems marred the event. The real anger came when ESL was able to get Twitch streamers banned due to their unofficial streams of matches.
Brian Canavan, a Position 1 player for VJJ.Storm, announced via his Twitter account that he had been banned. Another streamer, this one from Alliance, took down his Dota 2 stream because he feared that ESL could come after him and his channel as well.
We're live with Day #2 of #ESLOne Genting!
Time to head straight into the Group B lower bracket – it's elimination time!https://t.co/RUTJQihdBh pic.twitter.com/Mcrxw0c4Il— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) January 24, 2018
The AMA on Reddit went very poorly. While Ulrich Schulze answered many of the questions asked of him, he did seem to grow frustrated with the anger of the gamers. Schulze took to Twitter to say that the AMA was of “no use” because too many people were downvoting his answers.
What Was ESL’s Reasoning Behind The Bans?
According to Polygon, one specific Dota 2 page had “tens of thousands” of people streaming the action. However, the official ESL stream on Facebook that they set up only had 3,000 people watching the action. The Facebook feed is how they receive sponsors, so the Twitch feeds bring no money to the company.
ESL responded to the bans by saying they won’t let any streams that monetize from them to remain active. Valve said they don’t mind people streaming the Dota 2 action as long as they aren’t making money off it.
Schulze, who says he has “15 years” in eSports, complained on Twitter that too many people are complaining on Reddit about Dota 2 and not enough people are talking about the tournament matches.
ESL reported that partnering with Facebook offers better long-term growth for eSports than allowing all the streams to air on YouTube and Twitch. However, with so many Dota 2 players and gamers refusing to watch the tournament on Facebook, there are concerns about how long this partnership can last.
