SVG: “Arteezy is a great example of what happens when a star player is given too much control over the team.”

Richard Lewis: I’ve worked with SumaiL. We brought him on to analyze a tournament I was hosting, and I had the chance to chat with him. He’s an incredible, very humble guy. He didn’t even know we had an assistant. Before the broadcast, he whispered to me, “Is that the girl who brings the coffee? Can I ask her to bring me a cup?” I was like, “Yeah, that’s literally her job.” And there he was, a multimillionaire. To me, SumaiL will always be [the best].

SVG: I think Arteezy has had one of the most interesting careers in Dota 2. He’s had tremendous success, and he was so close to becoming a world champion, but he never quite made it. And that story makes a lot of people wonder: why didn’t he make it? And I can say—I worked with him for about two years; I coached him. I saw him in a team environment, close to his peak. His peak came very early, at least statistically speaking. His famous performance at MLG Columbus and all that. And at that point, he was undoubtedly the best player in the world. No one was even close. He literally changed how the game had to be balanced for years to come.

By the way, he recently got married in Shanghai. I don’t know if you’re aware of that. He invited a lot of the old-timers from EG and people from the Dota scene to the event. He’s been in this scene for a very long time, and pretty much everyone who works with him loves him. Unless, of course, he’s kicked them out—in which case they’re sworn enemies. There’s no middle ground, because he’s an extremely charismatic figure. Spend 10 minutes with him, and you’ll be sucked into his vortex of charm. This makes him very ambivalent, since he’s kicked a lot of people out over the years. <...>

Arteezy is a great example of what happens when a star player is given too much control over the team. This is just my opinion; I don’t claim to know the whole truth. ...> I think he and BuLba steered that Evil Geniuses roster in the direction they wanted, but not necessarily toward a championship.

Richard Lewis: Winning The International means a secure future. The stakes are incredibly high when building a team capable of winning The International. That’s how this gripping human drama unfolds, but the problem is that it’s extremely intense for young people. You watch the matches, participate in the tournament, and there’s 60,000 just for participating at first, then 120, 300, 800, and now 1.2 million, then 10 million... And this environment of incredible pressure exists not only during the tournament, but also for months before and months after, because you have to build these teams that you believe will be able to handle it and take you higher up this hierarchy. And that destroys friendships.

SVG: It’s a year-round process. You’re already thinking about the next TI the day after a loss; you’re already making plans. I’ve seen people talking to teams, trying to get on them, while they were still at TI, knowing they’d be eliminated anyway. “As soon as you get knocked out, take me on your team.”

And that’s exactly how it was intended. I remember there were meetings where Valve said: we want TI to be as intense as possible to create the best storylines. That’s exactly what was said, so it was done deliberately. That’s why there were best-of-1 elimination matches from the start, and that’s why all those fundraisers were held—to create an environment that puts as many players as possible under as much pressure as possible in order to generate exciting storylines. And it’s a very double-edged sword. But it definitely worked.

I remember playing at TI10; there was one of those knockout matches, and that single map was worth almost $800,000. I was the captain of that team, and I didn’t want my players thinking about the money. That’s bad. You don’t want a player, 30 minutes into that match, right as you’re about to engage in a team fight, to be thinking about that big paycheck instead of focusing on when to use his abilities. That could cost you the match. But how can you not think about it? And I remember that sitting in those booths was one of the hardest experiences of my life, under the pressure of such enormous sums of money. The situation was unhealthy.

I’m not complaining, but it felt like people’s whole lives were on the line. Win one game—that’s another million; win a few more—another two million. You just look at that check and think that, in a way, it’s bad—there’s no stability. Players make it into the top 3 instead of the top 6 and end their careers. And I think Valve, seeing this, decided it was too much. It’s unhealthy for the player base because people were literally leaving the scene or burning out because of a single tournament.