Valve has been the subject of a lot of community backlash regarding their handling of DOTA teams, players and tournaments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now they took to Twitter to release a statement, talking about their current efforts and future plans for DOTA 2 and streaming rights for competitive series and matches.
Why DPC was postponed
First of Valve touched on the Dota Pro Circuit, which was postponed indefinitely. Even though they were in contact with the tournament organizers the threat of COVID-19 was too big. “While neither the cross-region competition nor the relative distance to The International are absolute requirements, we felt the DPC as both a function of The International and also as a coherent product for fans would be better served by holding off on them for now.”
Update on Competitive Scene https://t.co/vAWo7xK6dw
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) September 4, 2020
According to Valve they had ideas regarding DPC involving LAN without a crowd or a new system for points, but due to COVID-19 remaining prevalent they weren’t able to work something out in time. Tournament organizer feedback (alongside others) led them to postpone DPC indefinitely, Valve explained.
Supporting tournament organizers
Valve also said they’re working with a few tournament organizers in China and Europe but are not able to commit to anything yet. Despite this, Valve will be supporting tournament organizers financially to increase coverage globally for the rest of the year, answering the backlash they’ve received from fans regarding their inactivity on the matter.
“Our outlook right now is that we are anticipating the start of DPC to be in the first month or two of 2021.”
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— Team Secret (@teamsecret) September 4, 2020
A timeframe was also put in place by Valve regarding the Dota Pro Circuit, aiming to get it back up somewhere at the start of 2021. Valve hopes that by then players will be able to travel safely and that other limitations and hurdles will be easier to overcome. The plan to hold The International 10 in Stockholm next year still stands, but Valve has back-up plans in place.
On streaming rights and DotaTV
Finally, Valve also touched on DotaTV and streaming rights when it comes to events. They’ll be changing up their policies to benefit the tournament organizers more. “Starting September 15, the Dota license will be updated to reflect the following: Organizers that run Dota 2 Tournaments will have to provide community streamers with a reasonable and simple to execute set of non-monetary requirements, such as displaying the organizers sponsors on their streams or having a slight delay on the games.“
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“Community streamers will be able to use the DotaTV feed in their broadcast as long as they agree to those requirements.” Valve explained. “We believe this will provide more certainty and confidence to community streamers to be able to cast without a lot of turmoil, while at the same time protecting some key interests that tournament organizers have.”
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