A wild Gaben appears: Valve CEO responds to Dota 2 Shanghai Major backlash

If you’ve been paying attention (or read about it here), you know there’s big trouble in Dota China. As the on-going trainwreck that is Tournament Drama Island: Shanghai (or the Dota 2 Shanghai Majors) continues to crash, our friends and fellows over at the Dota 2 subreddit have just received a response from on high in the biggest return of the king since the Tolkien movie.

Gabe “Gaben” Newell, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Valve, LLC (and the father of Valve and Steam as we know it) took a moment to personally comment on the total travesty on-going situation that is the 2016 Dota 2 Shanghai Major. 

Not a “mere” Valve employee. Not someone writing a faceless, nameless clean-cut business response to an incident. Gaben himself took time, came to Reddit, and gave us his personal response to what’s been happening in Shanghai. 

Currently, the subreddit, Twitter, and nearly anyone who watches Dota 2 (as well as even some who don’t) are going mad over the response. Though reactions are still split, with users responding with anything from “thank f*cking god you are firing that production company” to the slightly more emotionally confused, “I feel like my dad just came home after abandoning our family, kissed my mom, slapped her, then took the dog and left”, two immediate things keep popping up —

1. What exactly do you have to do to get booted from a broadcast in the middle of the tournament, and receive a personal reprimand from a multi-billionare CEO of the very company that made the game you’re casting? That has to be an achievement unlocked, whatever it is. 

2) Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for saying that the production company (Perfect World, or more accurately Perfect World’s affiliate KeyTV) is done before the Main Event of the Shanghai Major — and hopefully done with Valve events for good, as this is actually the second offense: the Nanyang DotA 2 Championship event, while considerably less horrific than Shanghai Majors, was also riddled with its own issues. 

At any rate, while the exact nature of James “2GD” Harding’s transgressions are still up in the air, the good news is this: coverage of Dota 2 events will be much better moving forward, and the company in charge of “production” in the region fired — hopefully never to return.

The Gaben has spoken.