BSJ’s Dota 2 team loses its Division II spot in North America

Brian “BSJ” Canavan is one of the best content creators in Dota 2. He’s also the best coach that the community has available on YouTube. Of course, you can always go to the top coaches who are part of the best Dota 2 teams, but their hourly fees are quite high.

Watching BSJ is much cheaper and he is really good at explaining complex concepts in a clear way. Because he has around 150.000 subscribers on YouTube, when he competes in professional matches, a lot more people tune in even if the competition is not that relevant.

Division II in North America is not exactly a league full of future TI winners, but it’s still quite interesting to watch. As a member of Fart Studios, BSJ was expected to survive or possibly even thrive in this competition. In Tour 1 he played well and the team was able to preserve its spot for Tour 2. But this time, something went wrong.

The results don’t tell the real story

Fart Studios ended Tour 2 of Dota Pro Circuit 2023 with seven consecutive losses. For someone who doesn’t follow much NA Dota, these results are absolutely abysmal and seem to suggest that BSJ isn’t that good of a player. After all, he’s the carry and his influence on the team is high in every single game. His decisions matter a lot.

But he is not why his team lost every match in Tour 2. The real reason has to do with one of Valve’s rules, which states that at least three players must be physically present in the region in order for a team to be able to compete.

BSJ and his friend Andrew “Jenkins” Jenkins are located in Europe because they do a lot of talent-related work there, while one of the other three roster members had to go to Brazil to take care of a personal problem.

Because of this, Valve simply gave a default loss to Fart Studios in almost all of their matches. This was an unfortunate situation in which the set of rules established by the company resulted in a team’s removal from a relatively significant league.

Now, Fart Studios will need to qualify again for Division II of North America and it’s doubtful that they will even try. But perhaps next year, BSJ will be more interested in going back to playing professionally.

Header: PGL