This year has been an especially hectic one for the world of "Dota 2" esports. The new major/minor system has allowed for a myriad of great "Dota 2" action to for viewers, but has this been the best system for competing teams? Under this new tournament format, third party tournament organizers that provide enough of a prize pool get the right to host a major or minor tournament. Teams that participate and perform well at these tournaments are awarded points to qualify them for the biggest tournament of the year, The International. With the fate of these team in the hands of the tournaments, who exactly deserves direct invites to them?
Bad teams get invites
Although this matter has been discussed before, Peter "PPD" Dager added some more fuel to the fire with a leak concerning the invites to the China Dota 2 Supermajor. This tournament is the most valuable tournament in the entire year besides The International itself. The Supermajor will be offering a $1,500,000 prize pool and a total of 2250 DPC points. With such massive stakes on the line, one would expect that only the best of the best teams would receive direct invites right? A question brought up by PPD as he revealed that Evil Geniuses and OG were directly invited.
Only fitting that this DPC system embarrasses itself by ending with PGL/Perfect World inviting both @evilgeniuses who lost their last 2 NA qualifiers and @OGesports to the last and highest value major. OG isn't even eligible for DPC points. Very disappointing...
— Peter Dager (@Peterpandam) April 16, 2018
The problem
Evil Geniuses have been quite a roller coaster of a team this year.
Like PPD said, Evil Geniuses failed to even win qualifier tournaments at the MDL Changsha Major North America Qualifier and the EPICENTER XL North America Qualifier. On the other hand, they won first place at the GESC: Indonesia Dota 2 Minor. So there's some question as to whether they deserve a direct invite to the supermajor based on their recent performance.
But the strangest invite that most people seem to agree is suspicious is the OG direct invite. Due to the fact that DPC points are tied to players rather than to teams, a roster lock was implemented several months ago to prevent players from abandoning their teams or vice versa. Unfortunately, Roman "Resolut1on" Fominok left OG on March 17 after the roster lock.
So OG is currently lacking a full roster and is barred from getting any DPC points. So why are they being directly invited to the most important major of the year?
Is star power a good reason?
And now here is the issue of conflicting interests between tournament organizers and the professional teams. Tournaments succeed when they get a lot of viewers, and there is no denying that Evil Geniuses and OG are two of the most popular teams in "Dota 2." Having them participate would surely increase the viewer count, which is what PGL and Perfect World want to see more than anything else.
But there are many teams like TNC and Fnatic that desperately need DPC points now more than ever, and they have been performing impressively in recent tournaments.
So what should take priority in this case? Can we really ask the companies hosting these tournaments to sabotage their own viewer numbers?
This Pro Circuit format was only just introduced this year, so it's very unproven and unpolished. There has to be a middle-ground between drawing in fans while still remaining fair to the competing teams. It will be interesting to see if Valve will make any statement about this matter. As it stands, OG placing highly in the Supermajor would mean that those points would essentially be taken out of the pool when other teams may deserve to earn them more.
