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Over the past year or so, there has been a growing sentiment that the current system of bundling items with DOTA 2 tournaments is unfair to workshop artists. Many artists feel that Valve has subtly 'forced' them into working with tournaments by showing bundled items preferential treatment. In a lot of corners, tournament organizers are painted as the bad guys. The arrangement feels inherently exploitative.
I've had my own thoughts on this subject for a long time, but they were never fleshed out enough where I felt comfortable sharing them publicly. Finally today, I stumbled across a discussion on Reddit where a workshop artist was arguing that the current system needs to be changed or even abolished outright.
I don't disagree, but I feel it's long overdue for someone on the other side of the fence to share the perspective of broadcasters and tournament organizers. I love this game, and it pains me to see people pointing fingers at each other and missing the elephant in the room. To me, it seems obvious the core problem isn't greedy/selfish organizers (although there are certainly plenty who exist); the core problem is that the system we have now is inherently flawed.
Hats sell far more than tickets. That's no big secret; it's something that workshop creators, tournament organizers, Valve and the community have known for a pretty long time now.
From this fact, it's natural to assume that hats are just a flat-out better and more valuable product than tickets. That's true in a superficial sense, but you need to go deeper to truly understand the current landscape.
Tournament organizers and broadcasters bring huge value to DOTA 2 and have arguably done more than anyone besides Valve and profesional players to grow the game. Large, well-done tournaments (most notably but not limited to TI) bring the game to a new audience and actually help increase the player base. That's just a fact. Hell, the strongest evidence is that tournaments were around long before the system of bundling cosmetics with tickets ever arose, and they were doing tons to grow the game even back then.
There is huge demand for tournaments and commentators, and they have obvious value. You need look no further than ESL packing a football stadium in Frankfurt with over 10,000 people or a closed event run out of our house racking up well over 600,000 concurrent online viewers for evidence of such.
Over time, thanks in no small part to tournaments, DOTA 2 has grown to the point it's at now, where artists have a large enough audience to be able to make a decent living selling hats.
The problem isn't that tournaments aren't bringing massive value to DOTA 2; the problem is that Valve hasn't found a great *direct* way to monetize what we offer through the client.
You see, the sad truth is that both tickets and compendiums for non-majors have extremely limited value compared to hats. Perhaps the biggest issue is that there's pretty much always a free, high-definition stream with no ads (for the majority of users who use adblock) available.
Sure, some people like to pay for the opportunity to access replays, watch player perspective, or simply because their internet connection sucks, but however vocal such people may be, ultimately the numbers don't lie. People who are willing to pay for tickets are a drop in the bucket relative to the number of people who will tune in to the free livestreams.
You won't meet many people who say they started playing DOTA 2 because of the cool hats (although they are undoubtedly a massive factor in retaining players), but there are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who started playing because they had an awesome experience attending a live event or watching a tournament broadcast. Many of those same people that tournament organizers brought to DOTA 2 are undoubtedly spending money buying hats right now! In a way, tournaments are a driving force towards making workshop artist a legitimate career choice.
One of the biggest hurdles I see for Valve is that it's extremely difficult to measure how much a particular organizer has done to grow the player base. Valve likes data, and they like to be able to quantify everything. For workshop contributors, they have a system that allows them to do that objectively and with absolute knowledge. Tournaments exist outside of the Valve's system (the game client), and therefore their value will always be more difficult to measure precisely.
Still, here's my personal theory. Valve is well-aware that DotaTV tickets aren't a great product right now. They want to reward the broadcasters and tournament organizers who have done so much (and continue to do so much) to grow and sustain the game over the past 3-4 years. More importantly, they want to create incentives for organizers to continue doing so.
But see, there's a huge problem. Right now Valve really only have one main way to successfully generate revenue on a huge scale through in-game monetization, and that's via hats.
So the result is the extremely imperfect system we have now, where workshop creators are gently nudged in the direction of working with tournaments. Workshop creators are unhappy because they feel like tournaments are 'relying on them' to sell tickets, and tournaments are unhappy because Valve hasn't found a great way to monetize what is obviously an extremely in-demand and valuable product outside of the game client.
Don't get me wrong, the system can be frustrating as hell for workshop creators, and they have every right to be fed up. But try to understand that the current system isn't what tournament organizers want either. DotaTV was an absolutely amazing invention when it first came out, and it's still light years ahead of what other games offer. But as a product, it hasn't really seen substantial improvements in years now, while new categories of hats, types of effects, and ways for artists to make money from the workshop are introduced on what seems to be a near-daily basis.
In short, the simple truth is that nobody's happy with the current system. Workshop creators are unhappy because they'd rather not work with a middleman. Fans are unhappy because those who just want the hats are force-fed tickets they don't care about, and those who just want the ticket often have no option to buy a standalone ticket at a lower price. Meanwhile, organizers are unhappy because their hugely valuable and in-demand tournament products aren't being monetized well through the game client, so they're forced by market pressures into partnering with workshop creators to drive sales.
I don't claim to have all the answers, and I'm not saying making DotaTV a better product or finding other ways for tournaments to generate revenue through DOTA 2 is easy. But we've got a really smart community and one of the most forward-thinking game development teams in the world at our fingertips. There was a recent thread with a long list of improvements and suggestions for Valve on how to improve the DotaTV experience. I seem to recall another thread from a few months back with lots of really cool and more specific suggestions, although I'm struggling to find it right now. Hell, I personally have shared a list of suggested changes to DotaTV on Reddit in the past, but even that's just the tip of the iceberg of potential ways that DotaTV could be improved and rebuilt as a product.
In the end, I'm optimistic that we as a community can come up with some truly awesome improvements. Let's stop pointing fingers at each other, and let's put our heads together to help Valve build a better system.
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I think your analysis is spot on. The problem isn't the hats, the problem is that there is literally no reason to buy a ticket at all EXCEPT to get a hat or compendium.
Even for events that I have purchased tickets for, I usually watch on Twitch so that I can see the venue/hear the crowd etc and so that I have content in between matches.
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Katowice25012 Posts
Good to see some clarification here from the side of the organizer, I find it a little odd and sometimes frustrating the perception the community overall has on these.
For some additional reading you might want to check out Kennigit's post on why ESL decided to try out their item set differently last year for ESL One.
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ld posting on ld how poetic
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Dota is in a place where there is always at least one tournament stream on at any given time.
Because of this saturation of content, no amount of noise made about giving non in-game item incentives is going to amount to anything.
Things like typical twitch subscription benefits for dota might be interesting. Having tournament related emotes spammable in game would make a lot of people happy. I can imagine already the ridiculous tobiwan faces.
I'd hate to see dota go that direction though. I'm against the hat culture, and also don't like twitch hive memeing.
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On June 07 2015 08:26 Thaniri wrote:
Dota is in a place where there is always at least one tournament stream on at any given time.
Because of this saturation of content, no amount of noise made about giving non in-game item incentives is going to amount to anything.
Things like typical twitch subscription benefits for dota might be interesting. Having tournament related emotes spammable in game would make a lot of people happy. I can imagine already the ridiculous tobiwan faces.
I'd hate to see dota go that direction though. I'm against the hat culture, and also don't like twitch hive memeing.
dotapit tried that with little success
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On June 07 2015 08:26 Thaniri wrote:
Dota is in a place where there is always at least one tournament stream on at any given time.
Because of this saturation of content, no amount of noise made about giving non in-game item incentives is going to amount to anything.
Things like typical twitch subscription benefits for dota might be interesting. Having tournament related emotes spammable in game would make a lot of people happy. I can imagine already the ridiculous tobiwan faces.
I'd hate to see dota go that direction though. I'm against the hat culture, and also don't like twitch hive memeing.
The only way to combat hat culture is for DotaTV to be equal to or better than the Twitch stream, which is simply not possible without significant attention from Valve, especially when it comes to things as basic as the shit audio quality.
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Overall, my problem as an outsider with friends in the tournament scene as well as the cosmetic scene, is you have the main product, hats.
People are more than willing to buy the hats, they're not willing to pay for the tickets. But Valve wants to kickback to the pros, as well as the tournament organizer, to reward them for somethning thats not really quantifiable. I get that.
But I think the problem is that the prize pool cut, as well as the tournament organizer cut are affecting the workshop artists income, which doesnt seem fair to me because the hat is the pitch of the sale, not DotaTV or the organizer.
And thats ultimately my problem with the kickbacks, is that kickbacks arent coming from Valve's coffers, they're coming from the workshop artists fair cut of 25%. With a prizepool contribution ticket, that's like a percentage of the 12.5% that the organizer/workshop have to split. I think we need to divide the sales more fairly, although that may mean smaller prizepools and the like.
I know you have that nice list of DotaTV FIXES, but I don't think it's enough considering streams often are way better for the casual viewer( and thus the masses).
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Most of the problem you describe i have already thought of in mid-late 2012. From my point of view, improving the DotATV platform is the crucial solution to most of these. Not only the viewer end experience need to be simplify and improve significantly, there are also many untap monetization potential that Valve have yet to explore. What if instead charging for dotaTV ticket, we open it up like live streaming service and sell in-game promotions exposure via teams' banner/logo system? We could create custom HUD for Redbull tournaments(redbull pay for the ads ofc), make that everyone who view it for free via DotATV use the HUD and only paid user get drops?
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i've always thought of hats being tied to tournaments as valve's way of subsidizing the competitive scene
workshop artists really have no reason to complain considering the only reason hats sell is that dota2 is an extremely popular game
if the maker of that game wants to subsidize tournaments and not saturate the market with all the decent hats at once, that's their choice and a perfectly valid one
also no matter how much the dotatv experience is improved, i'm not going to pay for it over a free HD stream if i don't get something permanent to show for it as well
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On June 07 2015 08:48 Kraznaya wrote:
i've always thought of hats being tied to tournaments as valve's way of subsidizing the competitive scene
workshop artists really have no reason to complain considering the only reason hats sell is that dota2 is an extremely popular game
also no matter how much the dotatv experience is improved, i'm not going to pay for it over a free HD stream if i don't get something permanent to show for it as well
That logic could justify why Valve takes a 75% cut, and hat maker's 25%. But that number has been shrinking because they're adding middlemen that has no business to be there. If Valve wants to subsidize the scene, that's 100% fine, but it should come out of their pockets, not Hat makers.
Not only that, but they're subsidizing the scene twice in one sale with the prizepool siphon, as well as the tournament organizer share, which ultimately makes no sense because the pro scene does a lot of things for the game, but it didnt really do much for my 9.99 purchase.
Hats should be hats with Valve and whoever is involved with the hatmaking process.
It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money.
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On June 07 2015 08:53 lestye wrote:
It just seems like a shitty situation all around because hatmakers don't have the same opportunities with bundling their sets together like we've scene in some tournament compendium bundles, they don't get sponsorships or twitch revenue, It's not like there's literally no other place for tournaments to make money.
Tournaments also have stratospherically higher costs than hat makers. Twitch revenue is extremely insignificant nowadays, probably due to the ongoing proliferation of adblock.
Dota ticket sales currently provide very little profit for organizers. You're already giving up half your share to crowdfund, then everyone involved with the hats gets their cut, and there's not much left by that point.
There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion).
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On June 07 2015 09:05 LDdota wrote:
There's a reason why people like Kennigit often state publicly that they dont even factor DOTA2 revenue into their business plans and financial models, and it's because it is just completely insubstantial relative to sponsors and live audience ticket sales (except for DAC and TI, but that's a totally separate discussion).
ESL is especially talented at running up unnecessary costs in grandiose venues though
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Take out cosmetics from the game
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I agree with your analysis, and also I don't understand how item creators are not happy.
Basically, having your hats bundled with a big tournament is what, at least twice, if not a lot more in sales ? Even if the cut is lower (is it ?) I'm not even sure why they complain, I guess earning tens of thousands for a week of work isn't enough.
The real problem is valve's cut, I mean taking a cut of hats is fine, taking a cut on tournaments that make your game live and prosper is greedy and dumb.
What about pennants ? The next big thing that should help teams survive. Ho yeah it doesn't exist anymore and now teams have to release hats too...
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I know when I had to walk to school in 7 feet of snow, 4 miles out and 9 miles back I didn't have 10.7 million people to play DotA with. Hell, when I started DotA didn't even dominate over the Helms Deep and Tower D maps in the WC3 RoC que. Just sayyn.
This guy above me makes an excellent point. Is our fight with Valve? 75% to this day, considering what's been made off which was intended as a free game... Obviously Valve intended to make money when making DotA 2, however the cuts from TI this year and last alone could pay for a lot of trips to Hawaii. They have less employees then your average local grocery store.
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Ironically, the better the production values for a tournament, the more reason there is for viewers to watch the stream (for interviews, intro videos, player cams, etc.) than to watch DotaTV.
Not to say the hardcore fan won't use both products to get the full package, but the current system is just conflicting.
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On June 07 2015 08:39 lestye wrote:
Overall, my problem as an outsider with friends in the tournament scene as well as the cosmetic scene, is you have the main product, hats.
[...]
And thats ultimately my problem with the kickbacks, is that kickbacks arent coming from Valve's coffers, they're coming from the workshop artists fair cut of 25%. With a prizepool contribution ticket, that's like a percentage of the 12.5% that the organizer/workshop have to split. I think we need to divide the sales more fairly, although that may mean smaller prizepools and the like.
Hat artists are always free to refuse tournament offers, and put their items into normal Valve chests. No one is forcing them to put them into tournaments.
But, apparently their are disadvantages to that as well....
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the main thing is expectations of player and tournament income are not commensurate with value, due to distortions such as hats
hats is the real value that people want to pay for. without tournaments, there would still be hats. without hats, would there still be tournaments? certainly not of the scale dota 2 has grown accustomed to.
you argue that hats exist because of tournaments, and therefore it is right for tournaments to get a piece of the pie.
but you yourself already concede that this is not a great argument, and say that the hat situation is only because valve hasn't found a model to monetize the value tournaments provide.
but maybe the harsh reality is that the actual value is not that high. it was not long ago that tournaments operated on sponsor money. selling tickets to events is a relatively recent development. GSL in Starcraft 2 charged for streams, but when you are competing with free streams that won't work.
maybe the only sensible thing for tournaments is to ask valve to team up and have valve be your sponsor, or else question why tournaments are so adamant they have a right to exist in the first place.
or just accept that the real value of tournaments is as hat salesmen.
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I'm not convinced improving DotaTV is the way to go. Most people just want to watch the games and Twitch will always be the more convenient way to do that.
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EPT
