ESL Issues Apology To ‘Dota 2’ Gamers And Streamers
A lot of bad feelings rose between ESL, the company that showcased the streaming of the recent Dota 2 tournament on Facebook and the actual Dota 2 community. ESL sent out a lot of DMCAs to streamers on Twitch and even had one banned for streaming the action from the tournament. However, things didn’t go well for ESL. On top of fans on Twitter, YouTube and Reddit launching an all-out attack on ESL, Dota 2 took the side of the streamers and said that only they have the right to send out DMCAs, and rarely do so. As a result, ESL finally took to Reddit today on the Dota 2 subreddit and issued an apology for their actions, saying they were wrong.
What Led To This Dota 2 Apology
The recent move for ESL to sign an exclusive agreement with Facebook was supposed to be good for esports and Dota 2 streaming. However, while the Facebook streaming was supposed to be for official gameplay and commentary, ESL started to lash out at streamers on Twitch and YouTube for streaming their action, with their analysis, something that Valve, the company behind Dota 2, has always allowed.
As a result, fans and gamers planned out a massive protest and refused to watch the Facebook stream of the official ESL tournament. While ESL executive Ulrich Schulze tried to use Reddit and Twitter to issue a statement and answer questions from Dota 2 fans, but that went bad fast and made things worse.
After that, Valve issued their statement, saying that they were the only company that could issue DMCAs, and they were not planning to do so. In the statement, Valve pretty much said that ESL has no legal rights to send out the DMCAs because they only held control of their streaming of the Dota 2 tournament, not the players personal streaming.
I'm not crying. You're crying. pic.twitter.com/ocv2xQwY6W
— ESL Counter-Strike 2 (@ESLCS) January 28, 2018
ESL Apologizes To Dota 2 Streamers
With so much bad publicity, ESL took to Reddit to issue an apology to the Dota 2 community. They admitted they were wrong in how they acted, both to the community streamers and to esports fans. The apology touched on how the introduction of Facebook as a partner did not go well from the start and they hope to move on and work to make things stronger.
ESL then stated that their goal is only to elevate esports for fans and want to build it into a long-term sustainable industry. They said that gaining partners, such as Facebook, is important to bring esports to the mainstream, but they need to now reevaluate their approach to this goal.
ESL did say that they will work to learn from the mistakes and will try to make better decisions for the rest of 2018. They also want to work with Facebook to improve the problems they encountered on their Dota 2 tournament stream and then thanked everyone for watching ESL One Genting, no matter which platform they watched it on.
