Kyle Calls Out Valve About TI11

With The International 2022 (TI11) on the horizon, the community were waiting for the announcement of the broadcast talents for this year’s TI. Earlier today, the community received its answer from Valve as it announced the list of broadcast talents along with their own autographed capsule stickers & voicelines. While the announcement had most of the Dota 2 community excited as new talents will make their TI debuts, Kyle "Kyle" Freedman (best known for being an outspoken Dota 2 personality) shared his concerns regarding Valve’s decisions.

Kyle is not happy with Valve’s decision regarding broadcasting remotely

Earlier today, the talent list for this year’s The International 2022 (TI11) was announced on Twitter. Along with this announcement, autographed sticker capsules and voice lines were also revealed for each of the casters.

Unfortunately, Valve is using a different method to distribute voice lines compared to the one it had used in The International 10. A method that leaves people with only a 3.85% chance to receive any talent voice line. This dips to .08246% or a 1 in 1196 chance to receive a specific voice line. This seemingly ticked off Kyle.

Functionality to purchase individuals voicelines existed for TI10, but it was removed this year.

— Kyle #StandWithUkraine (@keepingitKyle) September 29, 2022

Following this, Kyle went on to share his gripes with TI11 and several of the factors that seem to be negatively affecting it.

Kyle started by questioning Valve on allowing PGL to broadcast remotely from Oslo, Norway. He also questioned Valve on why the company relocated the Russian Language Hub to Kazakhstan.

“Not only will you not have players available for the panel, but the talent will be working from ~2AM to ~10AM locally there. I can understand wanting a remote hub, but couldn’t it have been on the same continent as the event itself? If the TI 11 Hub is in Oslo, why has the Russian Language Hub been moved to Kazakhstan? Is it because Norway suspended its Visa agreement with Russia seven days ago?”

He then pointed out that the Russian Language Broadcast Talent saw a massive increase in Russian broadcast talents, as opposed to last year.

He also called out the organizers for selling the Russian broadcast rights to a gambling company. Russian Gambling company BetBoom had directly purchased the rights to the broadcast for a seven figure sum according to a report from Cybersport.ru.

“Why would Valve sell the broadcast rights to The International to a betting company, let alone a Russian one?”

Being an avid supporter of Ukraine during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Kyle noted his worries regarding the logistics and safety of his fellow Ukrainian friends as they will be broadcasting remotely from Kazakhstan and being under the supervision of a subsidiary of a Russian betting company.

“Currently, these are the options for invited Ukrainian Dota 2 talent: either boycott TI11 and miss the world championship of the game you’ve dedicated your passion and career to, or fly to Kazakhstan to participate in a broadcast operated by a subsidiary of a Russian betting company, directly working alongside pro-war Russian colleagues.”

Finally, Kyle rounded up his opinions by complaining about the autographed sticker capsules for the broadcast talents. He questioned Valve’s decision of combining talent voice lines with their own autographed stickers as the community can only obtain the talent’s voiceline if they managed to get the Gold or Holo version of the stickers.

“Only Gold and Holo stickers grant voicelines (3.85% chance/46 talent). So, if you love a specific person’s line, your odds of getting theirs are .08246%. A 1 in 1196 chance. This also means that all money spent on Russian Caster Sticker Capsules will be distributed to all casters, including those that are pro war. There’s no way for me to support an individual Ukrainian caster directly.”

Valve and other entities named in Kyle’s questionnaire are yet to address his concerns and queries publicly, at the time of writing.

from AFK Gaming https://ift.tt/hHSZ4RF