"Best thing that happened to Dota in a long time!" N0tail, Gaimin Gladiators, Loda discuss DPC cancellation
2023-09-15 15:19:00Valve announced canceling the DPC 2024 season on September 14. The news divided the community: Some, like Johan "N0tail" Sundstein, think the regional competitions were quite boring, while others, including Entity manager, expect this move to hurt the scene. Part of the Dota 2 players used this opportunity to joke about the reasons behind Valve's decision.
OG captain Mikhail "Misha" Agatov shares his boss's optimism. He expects the scene to become more fun.
Gaimin Gladiators' Seleri, who won almost all the tournaments of 2023, joked that the change happened "because they were too good."
Veteran caster Capitalist is concerned about the lack of TOs to run the third-party tournaments, which Valve wants to reappear in the scene. At the same time, he thinks that DPC had "bland and low-effort content," not worth following.
While I largely agree & have wanted more third-party opportunities in the space, I do have some general concerns. The biggest being how many third-party TOs have an interest in running events in the first place. Hopefully, it's not just ESL & PGL with a hold on the scene.
That said, almost anything is preferable to the bland & low-effort content that has been much of the DPC the last couple of years. I have watched almost 0 hours of any broadcast other than SEA this year (biased). I just watch replays if the stream doesn't have much-added value.
Sure, I hope we get more Summits, Midas Modes and Animajors, but that does take the right creatives in the right places with incentives to make it happen. I also hope we bring back open qualifiers. The DPC supported tier 3 Dota in a way an open field won't. That's fine, but I do hope we still have ways for semi-pros and amateurs to compete regularly in higher stake opportunities.
Alliance thinks about the lost opportunity of becoming a dominant force "from the third division."
Enitity's manager, Noah Eigenheer, feels like this is a step backwards. Less players will have a reliable job and a chance to be noticed. He doesn't believe the scene will return to the pre-DPC state.
How come the quality of production and organization of DPC tournaments have barely improved? I felt like we’ve made small steps of improvement into the right direction, and I was hoping they would polish it out over the next couple of years. Where is this sudden change of heart coming from? Why is it so hard to become something more than just a game publisher. <...>
The competitive scene feels healthier than ever with sustainability and safety. The majority of players feel less stressed, more rewarded and valued. It is not perfect, but better than knowing you have a 1 in a 100k chance to get lucky. Just stay in the top 50 to get noticed? I’ve talked with enough individuals to form this opinion. The time Valve is referring to, is a time where we’ve seen the same elite of players competing. Since the introduction of the DPC League system, we’ve had a larger variety of competitive teams. We’ve had an influx of young talents coming into the game shaping new generations. <...>
I can understand where they are coming from, when they say it seemed to be more fun. Of course! The schedule was more open to be explored by anyone. The dreams and the stories wrote themselves. It felt like a long DOTA2 Honeymoon phase. To me, it is irresponsible to hope the same will happen again. The DPC League system was introduced for a reason, and it seems to me they have forgotten about it or might think we have forgotten. They have not addressed this or given the community any reassurance that it will be any different. They have no obligation to do so, but we’ve seen many times over the last couple of years that a transparent and communicative organization that cares for their community, always succeeds. It’s in their best interest.
