NS called the situation surrounding TaiLung in Dota 2 the “death of esports.”

After two such news stories in a row, first of all, I just don’t really understand how to view the South American Dota scene anymore. To be honest, from now on I’ll be looking at every team as if everything about them is clear.

And second, just how much is actually coming to light... Look, every time anyone—including yours truly—said, “There’s no ‘322’ on the Tier 1 scene!”—what were the justifications, as always? I mean, people would say, “Like hell it isn’t!” And what was the reasoning, as always? “There’s absolutely no need for that—after all, these guys have pretty big salaries, they have tournaments, prize money, and fame. Why would they need to play ‘322’? They travel the world, compete in tournaments, and make money. And risk all that for some measly bet? No way, nobody’s going to do that.” That’s the logic.

This logic is actually quite logical—the kind that makes you think, “Really, why would they? Why take such risks when you can play in 10 tournaments a year, win hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money, plus earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary that same year?” Top-tier teams pay salaries of 15, 20, or 30 thousand dollars a month—and even more for some players.

This logic—it sort of makes sense; it seems pretty logical. And for most people, it falls into the category of: “Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty logical.” But here’s the thing: before TaiLung’s ban and before DarkMago’s ban, this logic worked—now it doesn’t work simply because we now understand that the money you can make in this “322” business — apparently more than covers all those prize pools, whatever salaries there are, *** [damn it]. *** [Who cares], people are willing to risk all of this: potential fame, success, a steady income, tournaments, and all that [stuff]—they’re willing to risk it all for a shiny coin.

Obviously, that coin isn’t worth a thousand, two, three, five, or ten dollars. And most likely, it’s probably not even worth 50 or 100 thousand dollars, because a person who earns a salary of a couple of tens of thousands of dollars and has the potential to win tournaments with prize pools of 200, 300, 500 thousand dollars for first place—he won’t, he really won’t risk all that for some 20 thousand bucks “here you go, thirty-two thousand.”

Apparently, we’re talking about sums of a completely different order of magnitude—literally—meaning these aren’t amounts with four zeros anymore, but with five or six zeros. And if we’re talking about sums like that, if people are willing… does that mean anyone is [willing]? Any guy, any guy—it doesn’t matter which team he’s from, it doesn’t matter which region, and so on—sits there, and they’re like, “Boom, boom, boom, just do this and that right now, and you’ll get 500,000 dollars for it.” He scratches his head and thinks: “*** [Damn], 500,000 dollars, *** [what the hell]—that’s two years’ worth of my salary.”

And for that player to actually get that amount personally, he’d have to win five tournaments, because the prize money gets split up, plus taxes and blah-blah-blah. He’s scratching his head and says, “Yeah, let’s go!” You get it? This is Pandora’s box opening—it’s literally Pandora’s box—because now it becomes clear that the motivation for these people outweighed all possible risks. They’d look at the amounts on offer, weigh them against the risks, and agree.

That’s it, guys. I believe that the day TaiLung, the 17-year-old mid laner from LGD, was permanently banned at The International—that’s the official day of esports’ death [At this point, we only know about his suspension from TI 2026 and PGL tournaments. — Ed.]. That’s the official day esports died, plain and simple. That’s it, esports is dead; there’s no more esports. You can’t watch anything now without worrying that anyone here might be trolling right this very moment. That’s it, esports is dead, guys. Esports is dead—it’s gone. Just remember this date—August 9, 2026, is when esports officially died. “It was dead”—it may have been dead, but we still thought it was alive, and now it’s officially dead; its official death has occurred.