Is This Balanced? – The DreamHack Scandal

Everyone’s outraged and you can’t blame them. The International 10 has a prize pool of $40 million and the 12 teams that get direct invitations are determined by the Dota Pro Circuit, which in turn has only two Majors. So practically, every match and every little decision has a huge impact on the end result. And what did the European region’s tournament organizer decide to do? Change the rules without informing Valve.

Why DreamHack Messed Up

Playing Dota 2 with your coach next to you is like playing chess in a similar manner. Since you have more brainpower, your results will be significantly better. And that pretty much explains why Alliance has had a phenomenal run this season. The team hadn’t even qualified for the Playoffs of the Singapore Major but somehow won their first 4 season 2 matches in one of the strongest regions in the world, crushing opponents like Liquid, OG, Nigma, and Secret in the process.

For a while, everyone believed that this had something to do with the patch changes. Who knows? Perhaps Alliance had some great strategies that were now much stronger because of the set of buffs and nerfs that was introduced by patch 7.29. But later it was discovered that Alliance had been abusing a rule that nobody else knew about.

The Email That Didn’t Get Read

Valve had never used this rule in Dota 2. They had never allowed teams to use their coach while competing. And if they wanted to change something of this tremendous importance, they would have communicated their decision to the teams in the most official way possible. Because this is game-changing.

DreamHack decided to take matters into their own hands and change the rules without informing anyone apart from the teams. But the way they did it is simply unbelievable. They simply mentioned it at the end of an email. So obviously, almost nobody knew about it. The level of irresponsibility here is off the charts.

Reversing the Decision

After several days of total outrage from the community and the other professional teams, DreamHack released a statement in which they announced their decision to no longer allow coaches to interfere with their team’s games. The organizer also admitted that they hadn’t informed Valve about the decision to change the rules.

The Damage

The problem here is that the damage has already been done. Alliance defeated 5 strong teams while using their coach. And we have no idea what would have happened otherwise. Arguably, it’s not their fault. They simply followed the rules. But it’s still unfair to everyone else that things got handled this way. If I were DreamHack, I would ask Alliance to replay all of their matches.

I think this incident has done irreparable damage to DreamHack and in some measure even to Valve. The carelessness with which they both acted is quite shocking. Valve is known for having a laid-back approach and that’s not always a bad thing. But when you’re working with a tournament organizer and they simply decide to change the rules without telling you, that’s just next-level disrespect.

 

Photo credit: Valve