Valve criticized for neglecting the competitive Dota2 scene

Valve received a heatwave of accusations. It all happened due to a server crash in the middle of the game of the official match OMEGA League: Europe Immortal Division. Fans have accused Valve of neglecting the game and its competitive scene.

There was a precedent at the OMEGA League on Sunday. During the game, Team Liquid and 5 men faced the problem of disconnecting three times in one match. Due to the unstable operation of the servers, the teams had to replay the match three times.

This led to the fact that the community and commentators began to express their dissatisfaction with Valve. The main discontent was caused by the fact that the company did not officially announce when the DPC season will be resumed and how the company reacted passively to what happened on Omega. This situation showed that not everything is as good in esports as it seems at first glance. OMEGA League was originally created with a community in mind to keep fans from losing interest in the game while DPC and The International are on hold. But Valve reacted passively to this and could not make the tournament go without problems.

One of the commenters, Kyle, complained that Dota is the only eSports that currently lacks a competitive scene that its publisher supports:

«We’re the only game. We’ve directly funded our competitive scene and we’re the only game that doesn’t have one»

Later «Sheever» shared a similar opinion on Twitter. Valve made about $ 100 million from the Battle Pass alone this year, but it’s unclear how the company uses the money for the competitive Dota scene.

The reaction from the community, gamers, and commentators also led well-known journalists who are focused on other esports to tweet about the disruptions. ESPN’s Tyler Erzberger and Rod «Slasher» Breslau criticized Valve for how they generally handle the eSports environment in their games.

Redrafting after a disconect?

Many have expressed their opinions on Twitter and Reddit. The community asked to make it possible to resume the game after a server failure. Since when teams begin to re-select heroes after a disconnect, especially in tournaments, it can affect both the match and the meeting of the teams as a whole. Oddly enough, such a feature was in Dota 2, but it was removed many years ago. Since this is not the first time server crashes have interrupted a professional match, this could potentially be a useful tool in the future. Of course, this can be useful for casual players.