Steam giant Valve makes drastic decision against gambling and e-sports

https://ui-avatars.com/api/[email protected]&background=64&color=fff&font-size=0.5&rounded=false&format=pngby — August 31, 2024 in twitter

On September 4, the e-sports tournament “The International” 2024, the T1 13, started at DOTA 2 (Steam). 16 teams will compete against each other in Copenhagen. The prize pool will already be low. Now Valve has dropped a bombshell: it is banning advertising from the teams' sponsors in the game. This is apparently aimed specifically at casinos, but affects all advertising partners.

This is the decision: Valve lift in a blog post on August 28 (via dota):

  • A number of features have been built into DOTA to celebrate players and teams.
  • Unfortunately, over time these features were used not to celebrate the teams but to advertise.
  • In 2024, all “distracting elements” will be removed so that everyone can concentrate fully on the team. This is specifically about the tournament The International. It literally says: “The International no longer allows advertising or sponsorship in games.” This includes team banners, team logos in the bases and abbreviations in player names.”

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Advertising ban is probably due to casino rules in Denmark

Why do you do that? The site DotEsports explains what is behind the campaign. The tournament is taking place in Denmark and there are strict rules against gambling advertising. Since the gambling industry sponsors some teams in DOTA 2, the tournament would have problems if advertising were to be placed at The International as usual.

By taking action against the gambling industry, however, they are now also taking action against all other sponsors and hitting the teams' advertising partners hard.

Valve's decision to indirectly crack down on gambling is remarkable considering that the big business of skins in Counter-Strike is practically “legal” gambling too.

How is this discussed? Even if the ban itself is welcomed (via reddit), it is worth noting that things are getting tighter and tighter for e-sports athletes and teams:

  • In 2024, the tournament’s prize pool will already be extremely low.
  • There is less and less investment in e-sports.
  • Now the sponsors are also getting the horror news that they are not allowed to promote their brands for the most important DOTA 2 tournament of the year.

For professionals, bad times could be ahead.

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Why is the prize pool so low? For years, “The International” was considered the most lucrative e-sports tournament in the world because the prize pool was fed by the sales of a Battle Pass.

Valve invested a lot of development time every year in creating this Battle Pass with great cosmetic skins, which is why the Battle Pass sold like hot cakes and brought in a lot of money for the tournament. But in June 2023, it was decided to spend less time on the Battle Pass and instead work more on the game: Steam: DOTA 2 is doing away with the Battle Pass – now wants to make the game better

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