Former PARI CEO on the changed team names for TI 2026: “It’s hard to talk about naming and fairness.”
Semyon Nomerovsky
The Dota 2 esports community has taken to social media to comment on Valve’s requirement that teams change their names if they include the names of bookmakers.
Quotes are reproduced with the original spelling and punctuation from the sources
Dmitry Sergeev, former managing partner of PARI, commented on the fairness of the new team names:
It’s hard to talk about naming conventions and fairness when some are allowed to keep “BB,” others “1W,” a third to be hooLIGAni, while you’re being forced to completely change your logo, remove the word “PARI” from your name, and are even threatened with, “If you keep messing around, we’ll name you ourselves.” Oh well, we’ll tough it out, we’ll get through this—our competitive results will show who’s right.
We’re Team VISION, and you know who we are!
Former Dota 2 team manager Aldar “Jamba” Jambinov complained about Valve’s work:
Okay, I admit I went a little overboard with my ideas about a good professional season system for Dota.
Valve should first sort out the official graphics, which don’t match the registered team names.
Tundra Esports’ sports director, Alexander “Sweetypotz” Shcherbakov, explained the reason for the current situation:
...> Of course, we wanted to keep “1w,” but the plan clearly fell through. And then there was a whole flood of creative ideas, from “Team One” and “The One” to logo-style calligraphy and “1wing”—a nod to the Chinese Wings, the most recent winners of the International from China. By the way, this marks the 10th anniversary of that victory. But we can only get creative within the bounds of Valve’s vision.
All the info in the infographic from the TI team announcement comes from Liqui, an independent resource that the guys also moderate in between matches. And “1w” is the name and logo for our next tournament, namely the EWC. Simply put, because the team’s transition happened during the announcement of direct invites, we had a slightly longer window to change the name, and for now, the information there is only about the EWC.
But the funniest part is this: when the manager created a new Dota team to simply switch to a new ID and avoid confusion with the old one, people immediately noticed it and seized on it as ironclad proof that the roster was being taken over by 1win.
But when Valve themselves changed the team’s name—since the invite had already been issued and secured—not a single investigator noticed it, even as of June 22. We’re missing our own Overdrives in Dota, we’re really missing them... <...>
If you’re interested, I can share some prototype graphics from the canceled event; maybe the Beach Boys and Team Vision will support a flash mob of the dropouts.
PARIVISION will compete at The International 2026 in Shanghai under the Team VISION tag, L1GA TEAM will be known as HULIGANI, and 1w Team will temporarily rename itself Iron Wing for the duration of the competition. The main tournament of the year will take place from August 13 to 23.
Photo by Dmitry Sergeev.
Semyon Nomerovsky
