I mean it could be argued that by revealing this “scheme”, the TL org can no longer be trusted with any public statements it’s made. They seemed to portray themselves as taking the moral high ground but were actually straight up dishonest about their intentions. The hypocrisy is one things to consider, but I think the bigger issue that doesn’t sit well with people has to do with integrity, and the question is if they’re content with trying to fool their followers this way, couldn’t and wouldn’t they have misled and lied to these followers before? For how long? Were the management of this org morally bankrupt the whole time?

The same could be asked of the other orgs, but they didn’t open themselves up to scrutiny the way TL did.

I think if anyone has issues with this, they ought to question why TL or any other org participated in this tournament in the first place. By being involved in any way, they’re all complicit in tolerating the unethical practices of Saudi Arabia, in exchange for financial gain. Team Spirit could give every dollar they earned in winnings from this tournament to charity and they’d still be guilty of playing for this dirty money.

It’s an uncomfortable truth to think about, and that extends to the esports scene at large with the increasing reliance on betting as the main influx of money, so I think calling TL out here for hypocrisy is in itself a red herring that pulls attention away from the bigger, more sinister and insidious problem of an unethical esports structure.

Edit: sorry, spoiler tags don’t seem to be working!

It’d be a time sink for sure, but I think you can only fully appreciate the explosive rise in tension and the eventual resolution of both series after watching them in full.

For Liquid vs Talon, both teams could have taken g1, while Talon looked like the superior team in g2, and so g3 starts with everyone already quite on edge. Liquid seemed to struggle to stay ahead and at some point start slipping, and it eventually leads to the endgame situation and the hail Mary by Zai. It literally felt like the endgame scenario - where out of the millions of possibilities, and where all these specific events and conditions HAD to be fulfilled, both right and wrong, that we got this single final outcome - and it felt like Liquid, in one fell swoop, took their sealed fate by the throat, choke slammed into the ground and screamed “I DECIDE WHO WINS!” It’s a historic dota moment with a great storyline to preface it.

For Spirit vs BB, we get a similar situation, and the atmosphere and emotion of the previous series is still palpable, so it just continues to build as Spirit seem to be on the back foot right from g1, looking like they were plain outdrafted by BB. Spirit hold, and hold, and hold, and with BB staring them down, 15k networth ahead, Spirit with Yatoro on Drow just straight up respond with a resounding NO. The game that BB should never have lost starts to slowly slip from their grasp in a fashion closely resembling Tundra’s g3 loss to GG. Suddenly Spirit is on BB’s high ground even with a networth disadvantage, and they all in on the T4 into throne push and pull of some impossible magic to win the game.

You’d think BB, with their history of tilt, would be completed out of it after the loss, but they have grown immensely since which is why I think they’ve garnered so much favor. They show a lot more psychological resilience, and it looks like the first game never even happened in g2 as they outplay and crush Spirit quite convincingly, even if Spirit did try to push the game to its limits.

Which leads into g3, where Spirit start on the back foot from the very beginning and they never gain the advantage for a single moment, just desperately struggling to stay barely afloat. Pure and GPK look like MONSTERS for a good portion of the game. The tension only continues to build for the entire hour, and there are so many moments of brilliance and sheer skill that you’ll never see even in regular pro matches - just something about the stakes of this last game that pushed every player in both these teams to play at a skill ceiling we might possibly never witness again (and you KNOW both teams are 100% invested in winning because the ridiculous amounts of pings by both sides). It leads to a base defense that turns into an all in down mid to throne by Spirit that I just don’t have the words to describe.

Both series get some incredible and well-deserved casting from Sunsfan and Khezu. The only thing I could have asked for was a proper crowd to react to this, or maybe for me to have witnessed these series in the flesh. If we get moments like these in Seattle, we might just bring the newly renovated stadium down!

So yes, you’ll see a lot of gushing about this day being one of the best days in competitive dota history, and no doubt about it that it was. And yes, if you call yourself a fan of dota, you’d out to witness these historic moments for yourself. It’s worth it.

It’s 5am, and I’ve stayed up all night watching games. Was it worth it? HOLY SHIT YES IT WAS! I haven’t been this hyped since the LiquidvThunder match and that 1hp infest play by Matu! Incredible day of dotes!

DUGONG DUGONG

Agreed on your second point - how did these things happen in an international tournament involving large amounts of prize money in the first place? And was this something that other TOs had successfully prevented, that the current one dropped the ball on? Or was this always a security and integrity lapse that existed and that we’ve only just spotted, which would imply the possibility of this happening in previous tournaments or even the DPC without being detected? They can’t ALL be THAT incompetent, right…?

About the penalty that BB received, I’d be fine with it if it didn’t seem like it was pulled out from thin air, but it does so it irks me a little. Again, just a lack of prep that makes the officials look incompetent, and really doesn’t inspire confidence in the state of future tournaments.

Another very personal and maybe uninformed opinion is that I think he was a very stupid and immature kid when the previous incident happened and barely any different now, but with both cases I feel like there’s no malice involved - Hanlon’s razor.

Pinning responsibility on Valve seems like the easiest thing to do, but I think they should be the ones deciding if he should be allowed to play in pro tournaments - organizers differ in their rules books and stances but the common denominator is that they’re playing Valve’s game.

There’s a lack of consistency in the principles behind many of the things said and actions made by TOs, teams, players and spectators, and I may be asking too much here - iTs JuSt A gAmE - but it’d do so much good for the image and reputation of everyone involved if a decent amount of effort were put into running things professionally and consistently.

Personally, I think the response by many spectators have has been unnecessarily toxic and double-standard at best, and inflammatory, discriminatory and intentionally career-ending at worst.

No doubt what he did was astoundingly silly, but until it has been proven that he was intentionally using another stream to cheat during that g2, branding him a cheater is just not right.

What makes this worse is that people are conflating his previous action with his Z drawing with this, as if this makes him more guilty of cheating, or that it’s alright for everyone to rag on him now, even if this time around it may just be an honest mistake.

We know that there are consequences in leaping to conclusions without verified information, from the situation with Taiga to the mess with the T2 NA DPC. I think the state of professional dota only stands to lose if the spectators don’t stop this mindset of vigilante justice and crucifying dota figures before they even get a chance to prove themselves innocent.

I wonder if the response to this by the dota audience (and maybe even the players on Azure Ray) would be any different if this incident had happened to anyone other than Pure.

Joined!

If you’re talking about the dota subreddit, nothing significant as far as I know, just a gradual decline in the quality of conversations going on over there that was made really apparent once I took a break from that sub.

Apart from meta which has already been explained, players also play heroes which they’re familiar with. So the saying goes - “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Some players become synonymous with certain heroes because they become such dominant forces in the game when given those heroes. Pros will practice and get exceptionally good at a small pool of heroes rather than play all heroes at a mediocre level.

Shout-out to my American EMS brothers and sisters! May the patients you pick up have relatively manageable mangled limbs!