Dota Pro Circuit 2021: Troubling Signs and Criticism

The qualifiers for Dota Pro Circuit 2021 are about to start and the regional leagues look ready to have their first matches around mid January. However, there are big problems with the format of these leagues.

The Context of DPC 2021

Dota Pro Circuit 2021 is starting in January for the first time since its inception. Usually, Dota 2 seasons start much earlier, around October. And that’s because The International takes place in August. But since we didn’t have a world championship in 2020 and the 3^rd Dota Pro Circuit got canceled after the ongoing global crisis began, Valve had to improvise. It took them 9 months to regroup and their solution may cause a lot of harm to the professional scene.

The Main Issues

For the first time ever, Dota Pro Circuit 2021 uses a league format. But this format, which requires teams to play for 12 weeks plus two Majors in total, leaves very little room for tournament organizers to put together their own events. Historically, such events were either included in the Dota Pro Circuit itself or were stand-alone LANs attended by top teams and numerous fans.

Right now, there’s absolutely nothing on the horizon apart from the DPC regional leagues. And even if organizers wanted to provide something, they would have to make sure they don’t interfere with Valve’s schedules. It’s not yet clear how difficult it would be and whether or not TOs are allowed to run events during Valve’s.

In principle, given that the regional leagues only have around 28 matches per league over a 6 week period, the possibilities for additional action are numerous. But how do you integrate them so that you don’t mess up the teams’ league schedule?

Another big issue with Dota Pro Circuit 2021 is the prize pools. Majors offer just $500,000 instead of $1 million and the regional leagues themselves provide an additional $280,000 per league. However, this amount gets divided among 14 participants, 8 in the upper division and 6 in the lower division. Compared to previous years, this is not good at all.

The third problem has to do with analysts and commentators. If they only get to cover the DPC matches, their ability to cast professionally is disrupted by the financial difficulties they will face. People can’t survive on bread crumbs offered to them every now and then.

Criticism

Some well-known figures in the Dota 2 community have already complained about this situation. Jack “KBBQ” is one of them. Being the manager of the team that dominated North America in 2020, Quincy Crew, he’s worried that the small number of serious matches they’ll get to play this season will lead to a sharp decline in quality. And even though he doesn’t say it, I’m sure he’s worried about the financial part as well.

Other people, such as the South American player tavo, are unhappy with Valve’s decision to exclude some of the better teams of the last 3 months from the direct invites lists, even though they had said that those lists would be created taking recent results into account rather than overall prestige.

 

Photo credit: Valve