SVG: “Tier-2 and Tier-3 Dota 2 fans are hardly interested in the scene—there’s essentially no market for it.”

Cap: Avery, did you see Paragon’s stream of the TI qualifiers? That clip they posted on Reddit—the one with the pole dance.

SVG: I might have seen something like that. I was just rewatching the highlights—there’s way more to it than just pole dancing.

Cap: So what do you think about this? In the last episode, you had a lot to say about how you shouldn’t “sell sex to an impressionable audience.” So unless you’re about to do a complete 180, you’ve got to have a few kind words to say.

SVG: For starters, pole dancing in and of itself isn’t a sexual activity. It’s first and foremost a form of recreation and an excellent workout—an extremely intense one at that. Have you seen the athletes who do this?

Cap: Yeah, I’ve seen them—they’re seriously ripped. I won’t argue that that’s true. But do you seriously think they put this on the stream just to “show off their strength”? Did they move on to Olympic weightlifting after that?

SVG: I don’t know; I’m not going to judge anyone. It’s a bit more extreme than usual, but not much stranger than what we’ve seen for years at other tournaments. Eastern Europe as a whole is famous for its weird streams—and not just for Dota 2. There’s simply a market for that kind of content there, and perhaps the entire media landscape is moving in that direction: you can’t get anywhere without clickbait these days.

Cap: Still, it’s different when it’s an official broadcast of the TI qualifiers. Although, as far as I understand, this is Paragon, and this isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this—it’s just that this time they’ve taken it the farthest yet.

SVG: This is more of a question for the Dota 2 audience itself, which isn’t always large enough, hence the attempts to boost the numbers. Although, honestly, everyone wants to boost their numbers.

Cap: Since we’re on the topic of numbers—I recently came across a table with various esports statistics, and there’s something interesting there. In terms of prize money, Dota 2 ranks second among all disciplines, trailing only Counter-Strike 2. But CS2 had 23 Tier 1 tournaments this season compared to our 13, and the gap in the number of Tier 2 tournaments is huge: Dota 2 has 18, while Counter-Strike 2 has 102.

SVG: It’s clear why. The Dota 2 Tier 2 and Tier 3 scene is of almost no interest to fans—there’s essentially no market for it. In CS2, the path is clear: you follow a player in the second division; he dominates; a top team picks him up; and he dominates there, too. But in Dota 2, you look at a hypothetical Tier 2 team and realize that you’ll most likely never see these guys at The International. Maybe one in ten will go on to have a real career. This is a consequence of the lack of a clear division system.

Cap: When it comes to LAN events, fighting games had the largest audiences—Tekken 8 drew 70, Counter-Strike 2 drew 58, and Dota 2 was around 15. It’s in the fighting game community’s DNA: anyone can come and play; all you have to do is pay an entry fee, which also helps cover some of the tournament’s costs.

SVG: I’ve always been a little envious of the fighting game community in this regard. No major Dota 2 tournament is organized in such a way that a regular player can come and try to make it into the main bracket, like at the old DreamHacks. Maybe Dota 2 should do it that way, too.

Cap: And the last metric is total viewing hours. Can you guess where Dota 2 ranks?

SVG: I’d say somewhere in the top 7.

Cap: Fifth. Ahead of it are League of Legends, Counter-Strike 2, MLBB, and Valorant. Dota 2 has about 100 million hours, while the game right behind it has almost half as many. So there’s a huge gap between the top 5 and the rest.

SVG: We’re the smallest of the giants. And that’s something to be proud of: a giant is still a giant. For a “dead game,” that’s honestly an excellent result.

Cap: I also wanted to mention that Valve doesn’t like cheaters. There was a discussion on Reddit about how they blocked bot matches for event progression. The funny thing is that they removed Turbo for event progress, but progress still counted in matches against bots. So people started spamming games against bots and taking them down as fast as possible with Meteor Hammer.

SVG: That really pissed me off. The whole point of Valve doing anything in Dota 2 is so that you’ll actually play Dota 2. You earn the hats, but you can only wear them in-game. So people are going out of their way to play as little as possible, just to get the hats, for which they’ll then… go play a game they don’t even want to play. The only valid argument here is, “I’m busy; I don’t have time to farm.” Well, okay, then just don’t farm anything at all: it’s free, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Cap: In part, Valve is suffering from its own success—there’s so much content, and it’s so good, that people are afraid of missing out and want to grab everything as quickly as possible. But overall, yeah, I agree with you.

SVG: Plus, Valve hardly makes any PvE content precisely because nobody plays it—everyone just plays regular Dota 2. They make a mode tied to playing Dota 2, but players are like, “I don’t want to play Dota 2; I’d rather just quickly finish this mode.” So why are we even playing, then? Statistically speaking, 90 percent of Dota 2 consists of ranked matches; everything else barely counts toward that percentage. If this keeps up, it’s time to switch to Deadlock—there you go, Dota 3.

Cap: Can’t we just enjoy the game and not stress about the grind? A lot of people turn everything in life into an endless grind. You don’t have to finish every event—sometimes it’s worth just taking a breather.