As the 2018 Dota 2 season kicks off, controversy had already begun to swirl around streamers who broadcast or commentate matches from tournaments they aren’t running. While Valve has responded to the issue, the answers ended up being more vague than some had hoped.
In a blog post last night titled “Broadcasting Dota 2,” Valve addressed a rising trend of prominent streamers broadcasting tournaments’ matches on their own Twitch channels. Personalities like GrandGrant and AdmiralBulldog would watch matches through the in-game spectator client, the freely available DotaTV, and talk over them.
It’s easy to see both sides of this argument: Dota 2 has a history of community contributions, from in-game cosmetics to sites like DatDota and Dotabuff. But tournaments also need to bring in viewers, and having their content siphoned off and potentially profited on by others makes it difficult to sell to advertisers.
Valve’s ultimate decision: Everyone should play nice together.
To that end, in addition to the official, fully-produced streams from the tournament organiser itself, we believe that anyone should be able to broadcast a match from DotaTV for their audience. However, we don’t think they should do so in a commercial manner or in a way that directly competes with the tournament organiser’s stream. This means no advertising/branding overlays, and no sponsorships. It also means not using any of the official broadcast’s content such as caster audio, camerawork, overlays, interstitial content, and so on. Finally, this is not permission for studios to broadcast each other’s events. In general, everyone should play nice together, and we think the boundaries should be pretty clear.
A nice sentiment, but many Dota 2 commentators, hosts, organisers, and personalities have noted the vague nature of this statement and the questions still left unanswered.
Are donations, subscribers, and Twitch ads not considered methods to commercialize?
Those are the main way streamers make money after all..
— David Gorman (@LDeeep) October 14, 2017
With their new policy enabling personal streamers, Valve should really give TOs a way to directly promote event sponsors in the game client.
— David Gorman (@LDeeep) October 14, 2017
With this last line, I feel like I’m a kid at recess being scolded for not using common sense and the Golden rule when playing with others. pic.twitter.com/tscyK5i2hA
— Capitalist (@DotACapitalist) October 13, 2017
us: “hey valve what are the rules for this very specific interaction?”
valve: pic.twitter.com/CVAmUC1Rcv— ? Tom Farro ? (@FomTarro) October 13, 2017
So uhm if the Bulldogs of this world have subs on and donation alerts or just get any money from any pre-rolls that would be grey area again
— JJ – PimpmuckL (@JJLiebig) October 13, 2017
valve with the classic grey area expansion move just annexing people’s ideogies from both sides without actually clarifying
— Gareth Bateson (@GarethCasts) October 14, 2017
Sort of a double meaning; it both provides clarity and awards a few new questions
— Andrew Campbell (@ZyoriTV) October 14, 2017
Latest VALVE blog update just forces orgas to cut the DOTA TV, or stream it to DOTA TV with max possible delay
— Vitalii Volochai (@v1lat) October 13, 2017
Well it clarifies one tiny bit well, but leaves the larger, more important issue unresolved entirely
— Ben Steenhuisen (@followNoxville) October 14, 2017
uhhh I’m not exactly sure what this says beyond “everybody just play nice and stop bothering us” 😉
— Nahaz (@NahazDota) October 13, 2017
Comments
3 responses to “Valve Responds To Debate Over Third-Party Dota 2 Tournament Streams”
Some things to keep in mind that aren’t brought up which are valid points.
Tournaments without casters broadcasting in X language.
Often events don’t have broadcasters in more than their region’s language, so this helps those people.
Tournaments with poor casters.
The Summit was recently lambasted for this, moving away from impending team-fights to watch a lone hero farming in the jungle. If the broadcasters can’t show the action, why not watch a streamer who does?
Actually, that’s the job of the cameraman, not the caster. With that particular example, apparently the English casters didn’t have their own cameraman, so they were just using the Russian stream and talking over the top. So, while it might’ve made perfect sense to be looking at the farming hero given whatever the Russian casters were saying at the time, for those on the English stream it just looked like poor production value (and constant TTours spam in twitch chat).
True. However If a teamfight is about to break out and you cut away to something far from the action, regardless of the language of the camera man, you screwed up.