EPTHere is a comment from someone on reddit who went to PAX:
I can confirm the very conspicuous lack of Dota 2 at PAX this year. I went both yesterday and today to the PC Freeplay area. On Friday, we were told "There is no Dota 2 because we can't install it". Their reason? "Not enough bandwidth". Note that they have other games such as TF2 installed no problem, and TF2 is a 12.5 GB game, more than twice the size of Dota 2. After giving us this excuse, they told us the same thing that Cyborgmatt had heard separately on his own, "You guys should play League instead, it's a great game."
And they sporadically announce over the intercom at the freeplay area that LoL is having a PAX-double XP event for everyone playing at PAX.
Today I went with Purge and again specifically asked PAX people if I could install Dota 2. The answer back, "League of Legends is the only game allowed to have online play here, all other games are only allowed to be on LAN." The attitude being polite, but very firm and very eager to end the conversation, as if they didn't want to talk about it any more.
sidenote: There is also no SC2 at all, when SC2 has been on PAX freeplay PCs for at least two years now.
to clarify: By "no Dota 2 at PAX" -- we're talking about the complete lack of Dota 2 at the PAX freeplay area, not necessarily the lack of a Dota 2 booth itself on the show floor (that would be up to Valve). But the PC freeplay area had Dota 2 last year, and this year it isn't even allowed to be installed.
link:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1lhzhw/lack_of_dota_2_at_pax_players_being_told_they/
In the link provided also purge gamers confirms that dota2 isn't at PAX.
Can anyone at pax confirm the lack of sc2?
Update 1
A user went to PAx and sc2 was being played
While I was at PAX Seattle on Friday, I noticed some people playing sc2. I didn't really pay much attention, but I can guarantee it was being played by several people. I thought there may have been a mini tournament or something as there was sc2 matches being shown on televisions above a couple players. Can't really say much for dota2 though. I was mainly interested in other things.
Update from a PAX person:
There's a lot of thought that goes into choosing of the tournaments each PAX. As mentioned, they are designed for fun, as we want to make the PC room a comfortable place for all players, and not intimidating when a crew of pro players wearing sponsored T's show up. Believe it or not, that can be intimidating. On the other hand, we know that the competitive spirit goes hand in hand with gaming, so there is a balance that we try to strike.
Having said that, there are other factors. For instance, which games are being loaded on to the machines, which exhibitors want to sponsor certain tournaments, and then the most important factor, what's the bandwidth usage like. Bandwidth is a tough problem to handle when you have 350+ Freeplay machines and 450+ BYOC machines all operating on the same internet pipe. We've been making huge improvements over the past couple of PAX's by implementing better Steam Proxies, rate limiting actual seats, and just being mindful what games are being played.
Another requirement that we started making a few PAX's ago, for the sake of bandwidth conservation, is that all Freeplay and Tournament games that are played, must have locally install-able servers or sponsored bandwidth. This did cut out a few titles (such as Battlefield 3) that simply didn't offer a local server option. Other companies have in the past opted to sponsor internet. That is why there are a few titles that are popular in the eSports arena that are not being played. It's not that we don't want them, just that we have to ensure that the network experience for both the Freeplayer's and the BYOC users meets expectations.
We do have some eSport titles (like League of Legends) on the Freeplay machines that will be available to play, but no tournament. This is possibly because Riot may do something on their own. If you recall last years Riot Room, (which was freakin' awesome). I don't know if they are doing that again, but you never know. =)
I'm personally looking forward to the QWOP Tournament. I think lots of lawlz will be had! =)
Having said that, there are other factors. For instance, which games are being loaded on to the machines, which exhibitors want to sponsor certain tournaments, and then the most important factor, what's the bandwidth usage like. Bandwidth is a tough problem to handle when you have 350+ Freeplay machines and 450+ BYOC machines all operating on the same internet pipe. We've been making huge improvements over the past couple of PAX's by implementing better Steam Proxies, rate limiting actual seats, and just being mindful what games are being played.
Another requirement that we started making a few PAX's ago, for the sake of bandwidth conservation, is that all Freeplay and Tournament games that are played, must have locally install-able servers or sponsored bandwidth. This did cut out a few titles (such as Battlefield 3) that simply didn't offer a local server option. Other companies have in the past opted to sponsor internet. That is why there are a few titles that are popular in the eSports arena that are not being played. It's not that we don't want them, just that we have to ensure that the network experience for both the Freeplayer's and the BYOC users meets expectations.
We do have some eSport titles (like League of Legends) on the Freeplay machines that will be available to play, but no tournament. This is possibly because Riot may do something on their own. If you recall last years Riot Room, (which was freakin' awesome). I don't know if they are doing that again, but you never know. =)
I'm personally looking forward to the QWOP Tournament. I think lots of lawlz will be had! =)
source:http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/27572111/#Comment_27572111
Update 2
I just want to let people know that I've been to PAX on Friday and going again today (Sunday). The SC2 section is very small and isn't really a SC2 section. It's a Kingston Hyper X booth with just some small content from some players from EG and dignitas. Suppy, Incontrol, Demuslim and D.SeleCT
Update 3:robertkhoo the show director at PAX has an interesting conversation with somebody on reddit
]robertkhoo [score hidden] 58 minutes ago
Hey, this is Robert Khoo from Penny Arcade - the show director to PAX. I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. No amount of money is worth blocking games - besides the fact that it actually hurts the community, it would obviously hurt our relationship with one of our other partners, Valve. (and who doesn't want to have a good relationship with Valve - come on)
The only time we have EVER pulled a game was because of either technical issues (like bandwidth) or content reasons (in PAX Australia, funny enough, it was L4D2 because it's banned over there and we didn't know until the second day. oops.).
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[–]ALL SKILLRayeth [score hidden] 7 minutes ago
Sooo you're saying the bandwidth needed for Dota 2 has magically increased since last year? Or it caused problems last year somehow? Yet all the other valve games work on the same system?
Because these sorts of things look EXACTLY like money-hatting regardless of what you say. Even if there is a good reason, you need to get out ahead of things like this or, well you can see the shitstorm that follows.
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[–]robertkhoo [score hidden] 39 seconds ago
I'll be honest with you, I don't know the exact reason why it was left off, but it certainly wasn't because anyone paid us too. We're actually looking into seeing if we can get them on the machines today since people have been notifying us of a local-server option for it. It really isn't that big of a deal, in truth.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1lhzhw/lack_of_dota_2_at_pax_players_being_told_they/cbzlevt
update 4
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1lij8q/lack_of_dota_2_at_pax_pax_employee_pete_vapok/cbzlaeu
"I run the PC Room at PAX East, and I've run it at Prime before that a few times -- and I ran the PC Freeplay part of it before I took over the main room. Couple things -- Vapok is an Enforcer, not an employee. Secondly, Riot has literally no say on what we put on or keep off of the PC Freeplay machines with the sole exception of LoL -- we were going to pull it from our repertoire because of its bandwidth requirements until they stepped up to the plate to sponsor the bandwidth.
For the record, I'm also just an Enforcer."
