Hi everyone. I’m one of the talents from the Russian-language commentating studio at large Valve tournaments, and this is an open letter to them and to PGL. I don’t find it necessary to introduce myself, as most of the viewpoints and opinions expressed in this letter are in no way my personal ones, but rather collective. The central message of this letter can be summed up as follows: Valve, please, take action and deal with PGL.
Now to specific points. I think it will be reasonable to split this letter into several segments dedicated to each of the Majors. That will be the best approach.
The Manila Major
Last season, Valve was actively testing various contractors, apparently in order to find the optimal one for cooperation on a permanent basis. That was how ESL got Frankfurt, PW got Shanghai, and PGL got Manila. At the time, it was PGL’s first Dota tournament; the tournaments they’d organized previously were in other disciplines, which was why we were a little worried here: firstly, on account of the long traveling distance, and secondly, because the organizers might not have an entirely clear idea of what Dota was, what made it different from other disciplines, and what product the viewers would like to see. However, our doubts were gone almost the minute we began cooperating with them.
First, we were told that our plane tickets to the event venue were business class. This was a real gift to us, as business class is significantly more pleasant than economy when your flight takes half a day. I suppose it’s fairly obvious. Thus we traveled comfortably to the venue, were accommodated at Manila’s best hotel, were treated to food, drinks and themed events such as Oktoberfest (although that was perhaps a disputable choice, seeing as Oktoberfest coincided with the last night before the playoffs—but it was there nonetheless), an American cuisine night, a Chinese one, etc. etc.
The organization of the tournament itself was also top-notch, and we were more than satisfied. The absence of delays or lengthy pauses, or communication issues between talents and organizers, made for an unforgettable tournament, the best of the three Majors in the 2015/16 season.
I don’t think there’s a point in describing PGL’s work at TI, as most of the work there was done by Valve and MCW events, while PGL’s resources were focused specifically on the English-language livestream. Everyone was OK with that—PGL, Valve, and ourselves. This looks like a very positive letter so far, doesn’t it? Well, not really. Problems would begin later.
The Boston Major
Valve cut its Majors budget for the 2016/17 season. Thus while during the debut season, the contractors had been given a blank check and could ask for however much money they needed, this time the budgets were fixed. Nevertheless, they were more than enough to create a comfortable environment for everyone while also turning a profit. Not as large as in the previous season, but a decent one too. However, PGL decided it should make just as much money, and went into saving mode. This is where it gets interesting.
Firstly, business class flights were out of the question now—which was indeed clear to everyone by that point. We’re no superstars who’d complain about something like that—although granted, it was something of a letdown to go back to economy having tasted all the perks and comfort of business class. There were, however, other and more serious issues.
Besides slashing the budget, this year Valve decided to test a system where analysts would work from home.
Essentially, the experiment disappointed no-one. Many analysts said it was nice to not have to travel to the other side of the world when you could stay at home. Jetlag and acclimating are after all difficult things that everyone experiences in their own way.
However, introducing this practice created the need for an assistant contractor to help PGL set up analyst panel for the Russian broadcast and establish communication between commentators and analysts, in Boston and Moscow/Kiev respectively. As many of you know, there were only two obvious options here: to entrust this task to either Starladder or RuHub. PGL made up its mind and announced a bidding procedure for an assistant contractor. Bids were written up and sent to Romanians for consideration.
I was in touch with RuHub staff at the time, and they were a little worried, as they wanted very much to organize an event of this kind, while realizing that the head of PGL is a good friend of the head of Starladder. Thus there were misgivings, and they eventually proved not unfounded.
A few weeks after the “consideration” (the reason for the quotes will become clear later), PGL wrote a letter to RuHub saying they had chosen Starladder as the contractor. During that time, Valve was deciding on a list of commentators, analysts, and the presenter who were to take part in the event. The list was made, and invitations were sent out to commentators. “Sent out” isn’t perhaps the right term. MCW Events, who were in charge of travel, accommodation and other things related to commentators, asked them to fill in requests which could be used to book plane tickets, hotels, etc.
The personalities who were to be involved in the analyst panel received nothing. A few days after PGL’s choice in favor of Starladder, a Starladder employee contacted Goblak, XBOCT, PGG, NS, and Faker, the folks Valve had decided to invite for covering the tournament. Each of them got a different wording. Some were addressed in an official style; with others, the format was “Hiya, you are from Kiev aren’t you, so I suppose you won’t need accommodation?” To say those people were surprised would be an extreme understatement. For instance, Goblak, who wasn’t an employee of either RuHub or Starladder, might have no idea what they were even talking about.
Everyone unanimously declined to participate. The following day, a group chat was set up on Skype with a certain Silvio, who was one of the top people at PGL (or the top person, I’m not sure). The chat included all the people who’d declined to participate, Silvio, and a Starladder employee. Silvio introduced himself, said that Starladder had been chosen as the contractor, and that the people were invited to work on December 2–11. “Any questions?” was the last sentence of that message. It sounded as if decisions had already been made and no-one had a choice. This is hardly how an official invitation to a tournament ought to look like. Over the course of the following hour, the same thing happened all over again: all the analysts and the presenter declined to participate. “OK”, Silvio wrote, and the conversation ended.
That same evening, it turned out Valve had been entirely out of the loop on the bidding prodecure and PGL’s choice of Starladder. This is not to complain about Valve, who had after all handed over the organization of the tournament to other people. Nonetheless, the matter was investigated, as it was in no-one’s best interest to leave viewers without analysis at an official livestream. In a conversation, RuHub found out that the bid had actually never existed. The bids had been a pure formality, and PGL had ALREADY handed over the organization of the analyst panel at the point when RuHub had only just sent their bid in—Starladder hadn’t even written theirs. The absurdity of the situation was at its peak.
Valve’s decision was to give the livestream to RuHub, which PGL had no choice but to accept. The viewers won out, as besides the invited analysts, it was now possible to get together a full-fledged analyst panel in Moscow. RuHub provided the money that was paid to the unofficial analysts. In total, RuHub took pretty much money out of its own pocket, even though setting up the Russian stream was initially supposed to be funded by PGL. With the amount they’d provided, however, if not a penny had been spent on RuHub’s part, the analysts would’ve been sitting on stools in front of a coffee table with an old Soviet portable TV set to watch the matches on.
Speaking of money, PGL naturally decided to cut the salaries too. Compared to Manila, where everyone was paid what we can designate as 1.3k gold, the Boston salary was 1.0k gold for everyone, with no distinctions. Moreover, people would only find out how much they were paid upon checking their bank accounts a month after the tournament. Meaning that PGL didn’t have a definitive notion of a salary in mind. Not as far as Russian talents were concerned, anyway. English speakers always engage in personal dialog with the organizers and negotiate their salaries themselves. For instance, the absolute top-tier commentators and analysts can earn 4k gold for a tournament; for talents in a league below them, the figure is 2–3k gold; and for the presenter, 5–6k. In a handful of cases, with the young and inexperienced, the organizers are able to pull off paying what they pay the Russian speakers. The organizers didn’t want to discuss the issue of salaries with our representatives; they weren’t interested.
It was time for the tournament to begin. Out of the entire coverage staff, 6 commentators traveled to it at PGL’s expense (Lex had been refused a visa), along with 3 or 4 tech people, and that was it. Whereas earlier, any organizer would provide the budget for a content maker and a cameraperson, this time, the suggestion was to bring them along at one’s own expense, or not at all. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea.
Upon arriving at the tournament, the commentators and players began to feel the austerity. “You only get food if you work/play on that particular day” is a really strange formula. And while an organization like EG might not particularly care who paid for their lunch, it could be a problem for teams without an organization or sponsor. Thankfully, the commentators did work every day, so they got food every day too. Its quality, however, left something to be desired. There were other small organizational nuisances, but they weren’t critical and it’s hard to remember most of them by now.
The Kiev Major
You might think those were the juiciest and most interesting bits of this letter, but wait, there’s more. Quite likely, if the Kiev tournament had gone well, this letter wouldn’t have had to be written in the first place. This time, however, the organizers went even further.
People started getting invitations to the tournament at the end of March. A new system was introduced. Besides the main invites, there was a list of backup commentators and analysts: those who would be invited if some of the core ones were for some reason unable to go to the tournament. People began to wonder what Valve’s selection principles even were.
There was information that Valve put a certain “committee” in charge of selecting people for large tournaments. Said “committee” consists of a certain number of people who assess the quality and working style of various personalities, and come up with a list of required invitations based on their own judgement. Here another question arises: who selected the “committee” members themselves, and on what basis? No names are provided, for no apparent reason. That is to say, there is of course one obvious reason, and that’s to prevent any attempts at influencing these people to get them to pick personalities that would otherwise not have been invited. But there are two sides to this coin. A member of the “committee” may also be inherently biased against a specific person and be a factor in their absence from tournaments.
In and of itself, putting a group of people together is a very good idea, since it immediately precludes any bribery on the part of competing organizations. However, in order that the group itself doesn’t raise any questions, their identities ought to be disclosed and an explanation provided as to what merits and/or accomplishments earned these particular people the honor of assessing the work of talents.
Another problem with the issuing of invites was their quantity. An odd number of commentators and an odd number of analysts made planning our work and schedules complicated. I’m going to skip ahead here and show you an ordinary example: here we have 7 invited commentators (with 4 parallel livestreams during the group stage), and 5 analysts (so there’s no sensible way to split them into shifts). What was the problem with inviting one more commentator and one more analyst? We never got an answer to that question. The funniest thing about it all was that the number of people invited to the “home major” was one-and-a-half times smaller than the number of talents at the English-language studio. And while that system hadn’t raised too many questions before, this time the decision was quite baffling.
But enough about invites already. They invited who they invited, even if it did cause a number of problems. After the invites were issued, discussions began between PGL and the Russian-language talents concerning payment and everything else. Shouldn’t the very fact that an inviter doesn’t bring a specific salary offer to the table, raise some eyebrows in 2017? It certainly raised ours.
v1lat was chosen to speak on behalf of the Russian-language talents, as there was no point in discussing it all individually. We were on friendly terms with each other and wanted to present a united front rather than be disparate voices. For the first few weeks, PGL was evasive, didn’t name any sums and was generally trying to avoid clearly answering the remuneration question. Finally, they said everyone would have the same salary as in Boston (1,000 gold), regardless of their workload. In the meantime, the English-language talents were each discussing their salaries individually, and there was talk of the organizers paying certain personalities 500 gold per work day + 300 gold for flight days, adding up to about 4,000/5,000.
A situation like that suited pretty much no-one. Firstly, working in the hall is a bit of a different story from sitting back and just working for the internet. When you see people behind your back, when you’re in the same room with them, you can’t help feeling that much more nervous.
Meanwhile, an option discussed with v1lat was for him to not be a commentator at the tournament at all, but instead, to be the presenter, interviewer, and interpreter for the official Russian livestream. The discussion got stuck as Vitaly didn’t want to do that, and PGL forgot about that conversation. However, the topic of money continued to be discussed. PGL were actively insisting, “This is all the budget you’ve got, there won’t be any more money.” The talents started to get annoyed; PGL’s indifference was stupefying for many. A week before the official announcement, the Romanians simply ceased all communication with the Russian-language talents, ignoring them completely. Nice business tactic there, present them with a fait accompli and then just ignore them. Many considered pulling out of the tournament. Perhaps if that decision had been made, we’d have been able to break PGL. But this being a domestic Major who everyone, with no exceptions, wanted to work at, the pressure was much too strong for us to be able to gather our willpower and walk out. In the end, PGL’s tactic worked. While they were ignoring our folks, and we for our part couldn’t reach a consensus, the official announcement was made, and there was nothing more to be done. PGL had won.
People stopped thinking about money; the important thing was after all to make sure the domestic Major goes well, to prove that the CIS deserved to see a return of Valve’s tournaments in the seasons to come. A few days before the tournament, the talents from Russia found out that there’d be no invites from the organizers, i.e. PGL didn’t care at all whether people would get to Kiev or not, it just wasn’t their concern. Visas are another matter, where no-one is protected from a potential refusal. But people have always been getting invitations. Here, however, the approach was “sort it out on your own”. It’s very fortunate that RuHub and Starladder are based in Kiev, as it was they who sent the invitation to the Russians. However, PGL’s indifference started to get positively irritating at that point.
The talents from Russia were scheduled to arrive on April 20. And accommodated at a $400-a-night hotel. Yet again, one is left wondering: what’s the point of bringing people in four days in advance, when they could arrive a day or two before the tournament (the Kiev/Moscow difference is indeed greater than, say, the Moscow/Seattle one) and bring in another person with the money saved (13 x 400 x 2 = $10,400). In the end, they didn’t have to book a hotel for the Kiev folks (v1lat, Faker, GodHunt and Goblak), and that would have given them the money to bring in another person or even two. Yet PGL has a certain problem reasoning logically.
After everyone arrived and was accommodated, the Romanians decided to have a private conversation with v1lat so that an earlier, unfinished chat on Skype could be brought to a meaningful conclusion. In the course of that meeting, it turned out PGL had FORGOTTEN that a tournament required a presenter on stage, an interviewer and an interpreter. No big deal, you know, just the main organizer of a tournament forgetting to invite three extra people, happens all the time. Vitaly was told the following: “It’s your crowd, and frankly, we don’t care what you’re going to do. Have the interviews interpreted if you wish, or don’t. This is your business, it’s got nothing to do with us.” I suppose it goes without saying that Vitaly was not going to get any additional payment for taking charge of these tasks.
Naturally, Vitaly wasn’t satisfied with this arrangement, and refused it (although he did act as an interpreter in the end). Salary raises continued to be discussed that same evening. PGL only agreed to give some extra coin (1,200 gold instead of 1,000) to a single person: Faker, the main host. The following explanation was provided: “We took a look at the schedule and didn’t expect there to be so much work.” Towards the end of the tournament, they’d go back on their promise and say he’d be getting as much as the others, seeing as there was no budget for anything else after all––hence 1,000, and that’s the end of that. A new catering strategy was also tested at the tournament: people ordered food from restaurants with MCW Events twice a day, and the latter was in charge of delivery. I don’t want to go into detail on that situation, but long story short, half of the orders took 4 hours to be delivered, some weren’t delivered at all, some people had their orders mixed up, etc. Overall, no-one was surprised, as that system had looked flawed from the outset.
It was tournament time. The English broadcasters were working from Romania, and the Russian ones, from the CyberArena in Kiev. First game; everything’s fine. Except the English stream had live reporting with cameras at the hotel, and the Russian one didn’t. Why not? Because the Romanians had forgotten there was a Russian stream. Thankfully, the head producer of the Russian broadcast took to flooding the Romanians’ inboxes until, starting from the second game, the live reports were there.
Also people might have noticed that the look of the Russian stream was quite different from what PGL was showing. The problem was that the tournament’s chief organizer was acting as if they were exclusively a contractor of the English stream and no-one else. For this reason, plans concerning the content of the English stream were never put forward.
But that wasn’t the problem. Our analysts’ biggest complaint was the absence of ordinary laptops. This was something that had never been seen at a tournament before. Of late, folks had stopped bringing their own laptops, seeing as organizers often ask not to put them in shot, since some models would not fit in and would ruin the visual cohesion, etc. That was why there were no personal laptops at the tournament. Neither, however, had any been provided by the organizers. And that problem wasn’t dealt with before the end of the tournament, even though there were some hopes. The absence of laptops adversely affected the quality of analysts’ work, as they had to analyze matches based solely on what the observer was showing, and nothing else.
The group stage trudged to its conclusion; streams were on for 15 hours a day, but everyone was preparing for the playoffs, so there weren’t any particularly strong misgivings. Everybody wanted to focus their attention on what was the main event of the year for the CIS.
The plan for the analysis room was to make it very impressive-looking and “swanky”. But then on the night before the broadcast, the table that was supposed to be inside it broke, so we had to fetch the one from the CyberArena. No-one went into details on how and why it had broken, but it already was a bit of a disappointment. Later, there was information that the broken table story was made up, and there’d been no table to begin with. That information, however, is an unconfirmed rumor, so we’ll leave it at that. There were also no laptops, but you could already see that on our streams.
The following directions came from the Romanians during the playoff stage: “Anyone who wasn’t officially invited to cover this tournament CANNOT take part in activities.” You’ve seen live segments with Dendi, XBOCT, ArtStyle, Resolut1on, and Fly. That was initially forbidden. PGL itself stopped bothering about its own rule on the second day of the playoffs, and we made use of the opportunity. Aside from that, the credit for what did go on the stream—what there was of it—should go to the talents and the Russian production team. PGL was entirely fine with just having an “analysis, match, analysis” type of broadcast, without any video content if need be.
All of the camera people, editors, interviewers and others worked pro bono here; they received no payment for their work. And, most importantly, PGL had complaints even there. In the CyberKiev video where v1lat was sitting on the CyberArena stage talking about the history of Dota and the Kiev esports scene, the Romanians spotted a half-covered Blizzard logo behind his back. Notably, Valve wasn’t particularly bothered about it, while PGL simply couldn’t live it down. Here we see them no longer completely unconcerned about what was going on the Russian stream. They simply sought to complicate things for everyone, and they were willing to use any petty pretext for that.
There was a clear problem with the schedule and match times. Playing would go on for 16 hours, partially due to large pauses between individual games and the series themselves. However, on the third day, PGL shortened the airtime of various interview at its own discretion, so games now took a little less time to begin. Nevertheless, it did not crucially affect the schedule, as the third matchday still finished long past midnight. However, the organizers showed understanding in responding to this situation (their only appropriate response during the tournament), and thus they allowed the analysis panel to finish working earlier and get at least 5–6 hours of sleep (here we ought to point out that these people woke up an hour and a half before going live, and went to bed half an hour after broadcasting ended).
The problem of PGL’s indifference to the Russian-language talents manifested itself in every kind of small details. For example, on the first day, the talents asked for juice to be added to the selection of drinks, where Red Bulls and sodas were on offer. PGL ignored that request for two days. At the tournament itself, there were several Valve representatives, and when on the third day the talent asked the same of Valve, juice and ice tea were available at the canteen a mere hour later. A small but very telling detail.
As workers, we were left with an ambivalent feeling after the tournament. The home crowd had certainly saved the event; everybody was pleased to work for their own audience, and gave it their best. But many of us strongly resented PGL’s indifference and complete lack of interest in delivering a good product to the local audience. We’re anything but spoilt, but none of us had ever encountered an attitude like that at a Valve tournament. It was this indifference, this couldn’t-care-less mindset, that led me to write this letter.
I’d like to end my letter on the same note I started it with. Dear Valve, please make sense of this situation and conduct your own investigation. The Russian-language talents and production staff are at the end of their strength and willingness to work with PGL on any future event. I hope you will take steps and we’ll once again be able to bring joy and positivity that will not only be characteristic of our work, but also felt by us when we aren’t facing the cameras. For their part, readers and ordinary viewers will probably be able to draw a lot of interesting information from all that’s been written here. To summarize, let’s go through the main points of this letter:
1. The Manila Major was fantastic; we were endeared by the comfortable working environment the organizers had created.
2. Ahead of Boston, Valve implements a new system of studio operation, with on-site commentators and stay-at-home analysis panels. There is a need for an additional contractor for the analysis panel.
3. PGL announces a bidding procedure, but makes its own choice in favor of Starladder even before the deadline for the bids, as the head of PGL is good friends with the head of Starladder.
4. Valve finds out about this manipulation and hands organizing Boston over to RuHub. Meanwhile, the budget PGL was supposed to provide for setting up the studio is virtually nonexistent, and RuHub spends a big amount of money out of its own pocket.
5. Information appears ahead of The Kiev Major about a talent-selecting committee whose members’ names are not disclosed. It’s never established who these people are and what gives weight to their votes.
6. PGL present everyone with their invitations as a fait accompli, without any mention of salaries. Over the two weeks that follow, the Romanians dodge the question, and then say the pay will be the same as in Boston; when an attempt is made to discuss a raise, they cite a limited budget and begin to ignore all attempts at contact.
7. Kiev Major becomes the first tournament whose organizers refuse to send invitations to talents and say it isn’t their problem.
8. After everyone has gathered in Kiev, PGL organize a meeting with Vilat, at which they mention in conversation that they are completely indifferent to what happens on the Russian stream, whether it will have translations of interviews, live reporting, or anything else. This is not the concern of the tournament’s chief organizer.
9. Every request made during the course of the tournament, even a small one, is completely ignored by PGL. Meanwhile, Valve staff present at the same event resolve the same issues in minutes.
10. PGL’s indifference to Russian coverage is haunting people throughout the event. Instead of the tournament’s chief organizer, PGL look like a contractor of the English stream. Thank you for taking time to read this.