Professional Dota 2 players’ behavior

Once again, the Dota 2 community is discussing cases of inappropriate behavior of some professional players. Just yesterday, the new player of ??Na’Vi, young G, allowed himself to insult Muslims. And today, the former carry of ??KHAN, ??Zitraks, insulted the Turks.

There were similar precedents last year. The public, led by professional players, set an ultimatum to Valve to bring this situation under control. But a year has passed, and the situation hasn't changed.

The new director of business development at Maincast, ??Roman Dvoryankin, published a letter in which he spoke about the past incident because at that time he was the General Manager of ??Virtus Pro and personally watched what was happening:

"Yesterday on Twitter, Kasper recalled last year's story with a set of rules of conduct in matchmaking, which Solo discussed with Valve. Since then, there has been no special news, but jokes about this began to appear, so I decided to tell more detail about how everything was there.

To begin with, a brief background. In the 2018/2019 season, there were several cases where some players insulted others, hinting at their nationality. Also, older cases of similar behavior from well-known players periodically showed up on Reddit. Shortly before the start of last year's Epicenter, Ceb burned down in public, insulting not only his partner but also calling the Russians "dogs from the third world." It was already the second notable case. In the summer of 2018, MinD_ContRoL publicly regretted that "Hitler didn't kill the Russians." Both of these stories were without a public reaction from Valve and the community as a whole. At the same time, the case of Kuku, who used the word "ching chong," offensive to the Chinese, caused a storm in China and led to his disqualification by the organizers of the major with, to put it bluntly, the silent consent of Valve.

Solo is quite rightly considered the most authoritative player in our region. It can be understood by the attitude of the fans to him. I have repeatedly seen a similar attitude from other players from all over the world. Alexey understood that his moral duty was not just to speak out on the problem, but also to aggravate the situation to force Valve to react to the situation. Frankly, I tried to convince him to act softer, because the team's performance at the home tournament, the organizer of which is in the same holding with the VP, was threatened. However, better understanding his motivation, I offered my help in this process, although I knew that this would mean a direct conflict with the Epicenter management. As a result, Solo announced that he would not play in the tournament if Valve didn't react to the situation. By this time, Ceb had already apologized publicly, but it was important for us to do our best to ensure that such situations don't recur in the future.

I prepared a large letter to Valve's Vice President, where I described the situation in detail and suggested that we try to find a solution together. Roughly speaking, they were extremely unhappy with the ultimatum approach when Solo's public actions forced them to react somehow. We received written confirmation that Valve is concerned about the situation, intend to substantively discuss it within The International in Shanghai with the players personally, and find a long-term solution. It suited us, and together with the OG management, we began preparations for this meeting.

The meeting took place, with the participation of Valve's Vice President Eric Johnson, Seb, Solo, and myself. Eric clearly said that they are against the proposed OG solution with rules of conduct and are planning to integrate the reporting system about such insults into the matchmaking interface somehow. Also, Valve was opposed to any further public comments on this topic.

At the end of 2019, before leaving the VP, Solo and I again sent a couple of letters to Valve to clarify how things are with this issue. We agreed to discuss this topic in a personal meeting in their office at the end of January 2020, when representatives of the world's leading Esports teams gathered in Seattle. At the meeting, colleagues from Valve confirmed that they continue to work on these issues. At the same time, they are delighted that the community's consciousness has greatly increased because of the negative examples from the past. And then the coronavirus happened, and everyone began to care about entirely other things.

If you look at the situation now, then the number of stories with insults on racial, religious, gender grounds from famous players has dramatically dropped. I have repeatedly discussed this topic with the players themselves. All of them directly say that they started to behave much more carefully in public because they understand risks and possible consequences. And this is what Solo achieved in many ways last year with his actions.

Looking back, I understand that we have done almost the maximum in this situation. Valve is a particular company, and it was naive to expect any large-scale reforms from them due to one player's statement. However, I sincerely believe that Solo has drawn a lot of attention to this story with his actions, made pro players more closely watch their actions, and made the Dota community a little better. For this, we should say thank you to Alexey!"

Cases of inappropriate behavior of professional players are increasing. Will Valve remember their promise in light erupted in scandals?