Even though the execution and production of Valve’s nightmarish US$3 million tournament in Shanghai, China, eventually picked up towards the end, that didn’t stop everyone from enjoying one last dose of schadenfreude.
We’ve already written about some of the astonishing cock-ups that have taken place during the Shanghai major, which can neatly be summarised as an absolute collapse of organisation. Things were looking up once Gabe Newell publicly announced the firing of the production team and host James “2GD” Harding, although the public, press and players were unlikely to ever forget the experience.
And just in case there was a chance someone might walk away from the Shanghai tournament with a good impression, this final flurry of failures will ensure they don’t.
It seems to have been created by the organising staff taking down all the equipment, which they proceeded to do without informing any of the teams of players. Even though some of the equipment belonged to some of those teams and players.
Организаторы решили никому не говоря ночью разобрать практис румы и выкинуть все личные вещи игроков в коридор. Это полный пиздец!
— Georgy Faleev (@vp_drAmer) March 7, 2016
The translation, which someone helpfully provided on Reddit, reads as follows. “Organisers cleared out practice rooms at night without telling a single word to anybody, they just threw our personal stuff to the hall. That’s totally fucked up!”
Team Secret, the team that won the tournament, helped illuminate the situation by posting pictures on their Instagram account of the takedown in progress. Needless to say, it was a touch chaotic.
And, as you’d expect, everyone was pretty unhappy about it.
Teams are shouting at the staff here as the majority of everyone’s gear has been either packed away, lost or stolen.
— Team Secret (@teamsecret) March 7, 2016
Johan “N0tail” Sundstein posted on Twitter that his peripherals had vanished altogether during the whirlwind clean-up, but he had the good grace to crack a joke at his own expense.
Goodbye keyboard and mouse 🙂 one day I’ll return to China pubs to play versus my own peripherals. #fullcircle#headsupforthisplzXd
— Johan Sundstein (@OG_BDN0tail) March 7, 2016
Sundstein’s one of the members of OG, and he wasn’t the only player that woke up to discover their property had mysteriously wandered off. Bai “r0tk” Fan found the keys to his Maserati were missing.
There was miscommunication btwn PW and hotel. PW is willing to pay all costs of missing gear/items. However, poor Rotk’s car keys are mia..
— MissHoneybadger (@the_evany) March 7, 2016
In case you’re wondering, PW is Perfect World — the group Valve partnered with to run the tournament. The fact that they were willing to pay all the costs of missing gear and items is nice, but you have to wonder how it happened in the first place.
According to the hotel itself, Perfect World told the Marriott that a range of peripherals had gone missing. The police then rocked up and spoke to a supervisor about the missing items. Following a review of the CCTV footage, the police concluded that “there are no evidence showing someone stole mouse, earphone and keys”.
“They also think that it is better to Perfect World, to make a list to show what and how much goods they have been stolen as they claim themselves, and send to Wuliqiao Police Station to call police, then they will make inspection further.”
OG’s Dota 2 manager added that the hotel used a third party to clear rooms without getting Perfect World’s approval, and that the Marriott would pay the costs of every item that was missing.
According to one of the Virtus.Pro players — the first person quoted in this report — around 40 to 50 items were lost in total amongst all the teams. The Russian team retrieved all their items, as did American team CompLexity — the latter mainly because they had the good sense to bail as fast as humanly possible.
We were lucky to be in our room before the PW and hotel staff began the tear down. We recovered all of our gear.#coLDota #ShanghaiMajor
— Kyle Bautista (@coL_Beef) March 7, 2016
And just for good measure, one of the players even decided to accuse Perfect World — although from the available information it appears that the hotel’s decision to contract a third-party is at fault — of swiping their rather lovely My Neighbour Totoro cushion.
I just realized fucking PW stole my Totoro (this one isn’t mine) pic.twitter.com/4qFYw7jMlJ
— EternaLEnVy (@EternaLEnVy1991) March 7, 2016
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Shanghai Dota 2 Major and one of the worst esports tournament of 2016 so far.
Update (5:04 PM): The nightmares continue.
It just never ends. Zak got food poisoning, so we want to rebook him and Josh to tomorrow. The result? They change EVERYONES fucking flights
— Kyle Freedman (@swindlezz) March 8, 2016
Comments
16 responses to “Dota 2 Shanghai Major Ends With Missing Keyboards, Mice, And Maserati Keys”
Schadenfreude this ain’t.
I suppose I ‘regret’ that innocent participants have had to contend with such crap, but I don’t exactly think I need to ‘feel sorry’ either.
Anybody laughing at these players isn’t worth bothering with, but you could absolutely say there’s a lot that the involved parties that oversaw this whole thing, Valve and Perfect World chief among them, deserve to be raked over the coals over.
Newell and his Reddit post look pretty silly in hindsight. That’s like Rupert Murdoch only allowing Newscorp employees to cover his wedding!
That’s why never do any major event in China. They just don’t care enough to provide you with proper hospitality.
My next door neighbour’s neighbour Totoro
really pathetic for a major event like that.
thats china off the list for the next 10 years i say. let them grow up
Jesus Christ that’s a clusterfuck and a half. Shadenfreude is for people that deserve it. Nobody deserves to have their shit stolen after an already stressful week of cock ups. GG China. You won’t be seeing gaming events of this magnitude for a while.
As @alexwalker pointed out in another article on this clusterfuck of an event… PW are a huge part of the SEA Dota scene, and trying to cut them out of the loop by moving to somewhere like Taiwan is probably not going to happen.
That being said, they seemed to have found a good production partner for the latter stages of the event, and they have said they will take a more active role in future events, so I reckon the next one will still be in Shanghai but go much, much smoother.
We can only hope they learn a LOT from this mess!
Also worth remembering that the production staff was a separate company to PW — which PW will probably rely on as a scapegoat to save face.
Their name escapes me right now, although Bun can probably remember. And there’s the other element: even if it would be better to move to, say, Taiwan, China alone makes up such a huge part of the gaming market these days that it’s bad business to not conduct events in that country just because of this fuck up.
Chinese gamers are pissed as hell too. This reflects badly on them and part of that’s been forgotten, mainly because they don’t air their voice through the same channels/social media platforms that Western gamers do. Anyway, Chinese events will get better. Look at League — the production and quality of those tournaments are shmick, and the massive WC3 events held there back in the day were fantastic as well.
The Chinese production team is MarsTV, contracted through PW.
The English broadcast production team was Key TV. These were the guys fired by GabeN on the second day.
Oh man, good old WC3: FT. Good memories for sure *reminisces*
Stop that, your getting nostalgia everywhere.
MarsTV handled Chinese and English production. Initially they handed English off to KeyTV, who were fired during the group stages and replaced with MarsTV staff.
The Russians production was handled independently by … I’m not sure, Starladder? They tend to do their own thing.
Valve partnered with PW who outsourced a great deal of the tournament. However, that doesn’t make PW blameless and, as far as I can see, everyone (Western, Russian and Chinese) is putting the blame on PW and Valve.
well RIot own by Tencent , ofc they known what they doing. my bet Keyboards, Mice, And Maserati Keys is gone for good. this is China
More to come lol
I bet they had a mad ball-pit though
Typical Chinese over-efficiency. If you’ve ever spent more than a day or two in China, you will know exactly what I am talking about.
Event is over = clear it all out for the next event.