Just a couple of days ago, invites went out the personalities and casters that are vocal in the Dota 2 scene to The International 5. We were glad to hear the successful entrants mentioned in the post a few nights ago but LD, one of the nicest and dedicated guys in the casting scenes speak out about the amount of stress and the struggle that these guys get, sacrificing their personal lives and time in order to be recognized in the scene.
David ‘LD’ Gorman put up a blog post on Liquipedia as a response to the frustrations and empathy he has with other hard working casters in the Dota 2 scene including a great friend of his KotLGuy before his last minute invite. In the post, he talks about the passion that he and his fellow colleagues had with Dota and how at first it wasn’t about being invited to a big stage to talk about his passion and rather to talk about his favourite game and have fun. How, being invited to TI2 was such a humbling experience that made him recognize how big the scene was getting.
One interesting part of what he said was Valve’s change in policy with the announcements this year as opposed to last year. Last year, successful invitees were allowed to reveal their successes upon given the invites; however, this year, Valve’s called upon the invitees to not mention it until they get the go ahead. LD’s insight on why this is the case is interesting: “I assumed it was because Valve wanted to avoid the drama and stress everybody went through last year and just do a single official announcement revealing all the event talent at once”. It’s interesting because even when Valve had sent this request, it still happened and slowly, people were confirming their invitations.
Much to LD’s fears, fans went livid. Such was the case for KotLGuy who arguably had been the most proactive member of the Dota 2 scene this year, and his fans were kicking up a huge fuss calling for his invitation; for his just rewards for the time and dedication to the craft that he had honed. It worked out well for him in the end but it still remained to be seen that other people he had mentioned weren’t given invitations, and he voices his distress, citing people like SUNSfan, Shane, Kpoptosis and Maut.
In the end, Gorman seeked one thing from his blog; that Valve would show some recognition for the tireless workings of some of the rising stars in the scene; people who sacrifice so much to be passionate about something Valve had worked on. And if that’s not possible, he wants to throw that responsibility out to the fans, to make sure to keep supporting these people and giving them the strength to continue working hard to make the Dota 2 eSports scene the best it can possibly be.
David confirms that he’ll be returning to TI and will be working it; but opted to play it down so that he could bring the main concern he has with the way this whole invitational thing has been done; and how it affects both him, his community and Valve.