John’s been digging into the new Smash Ultimate character while Spencer’s been digging hard into Destiny 2 and Genshin Impact. Rose goes deep into Neptunia Virtual Stars, Eternal Return: Black Survival, and the House in Fata Morgana sequel.

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Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @JohnMichonski, @captaintrash, & @arealpup, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

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To start off, Valve will track player’s accomplishments in tournaments via a new point system. These points will count towards a team’s total and the top teams will get invites to top tournaments. This removes the arbitrary system from before, in which top teams simply got invites based on Valve’s internal rhyme or reason. This also means if a player chooses to transfer to a new team within a specific period of time, their points will carry with them. A team’s points will only matter for the top 3 players, so teams can bring in fresh newcomers when necessary without worry of losing their invite.

“The total points per tournament will also partially scale based on the time of year, with tournaments closer to The International awarding additional points. Qualifying Points will be granted based on placing high in Majors and Minors and will accumulate on individual players. Roster lock seasons will still exist, and players switching teams during the approved periods will retain their Qualifying Points.”

Speaking of invites, Dota Majors and Minors now have distinct definitions. A Major must have a prize pool over $500,000, which will then be matched by Valve to make it a cool million, whereas a Minor will be around $150,000 and will count for less points than a Major when players compete. If either size of competition wants a Valve sponsorship, they will also need teams from all six regions from around the world. This means Valve will have less of a direct hand in creating and putting on tournaments, but have set up specific regulations in place for those who do want to run a tourney.

These changes give clear structure for teams, players, and tournament organizers from here on out. Dota 2 is beginning to look more and more like a typical sport, rather than the hodgepodge of competitions it, and other e-sports, have resembled in the past. With League of Legends still burning brightly, Dota 2 has plenty of reason to believe it’ll keep fighting the e-sports fight for at least a few more years to come.

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“So, The segment finishes. I go to production room to ask Bonni the producer when she thinks we will start again. She doesn’t know but tells me she will come get us from the dining room when she knows. Then rushing around the corner comes Bruno.

Bruno: James… You’re fired

James: What?”

In summary Harding was hired to host a Dota 2 tournament and decided he’d learn the ‘meta’ of the game as he went. Learning in front of camera, from panels of more learned people, hoping to somehow teach the audience and fill in expected production delays. He claims that ‘Icefrog’, the original creator of Defense of the Ancients, told Harding to be himself. Harding did just that, telling a porn joke within ten minutes of the opening broadcast and a “bottom bitch” joke later on. Harding says the latter joke was about players who he is friends with. Throw in this final segment before his firing, that Harding links to in his statement, and you might be able to see why Valve decided to fire him.

Harding even claims he spotted Gabe Newell’s email address on the phone of Bruno, a software engineer at Valve and longtime Dota 2 player, while he was being fired. Harding spins a great tale but I know that every story has two sides and this one is very much his own version of these events. The Dota 2 community, especially on Reddit, seem to be on Harding’s side. But during a three million dollar tournament Harding thought a whiteboard, porn jokes, and learning the deep meta as he went along was appropriate. Valve shouldn’t be shunned for stepping in and creating an atmosphere that’s better for their product. Harding isn’t wrong for defending himself, and does seem to be blamed for just being who he’s always been, but that doesn’t mean he’s in the right either.

“For the record the Bottom Bitch joke was about Waga/Sing, personal friends of mine who have both contacted me for support. So for me it wasn’t out of place.” –Harding defending one of his jokes.

It should also be noted that Harding goes into a lot of detail about previous Dota 2 events, including a few of The Internationals. Some of his claims about pay have been corrected by others within the Dota 2 community.

You can also read into some details about what happened with the production team, who were also fired by Valve.

Original Story: Right now, Dota 2 is having a major over in Shanghai, and there have been some problems. After a series of technical and personnel problems, Gabe Newell stepped in and fired long time Dota 2 host, James “2GD” Harding, and the production company covering the major for Valve.

It all started when Harding started to go off-script, at one point mentioning how he looked at porn in his hotel room to prepare, and essentially acted unprofessionally. This is aside from the fact that Harding would often look at the wrong camera, complain to the director while on camera, and generally wasn’t up to date or knowledgeable about Dota 2 strategy or meta-strategy. Harding’s issues weren’t the only problems. The overall production problems included bad mic levels, multiple delays with no explanations, and disconnections between the matches, Twitch, and Dota 2’s site. This all, eventually, led to Harding’s and the production team’s termination.

Sorry to say I won’t be returning to the Shanghai major, I was let go after that last segment. We’ll always have day 1 together. 🙁

— James Harding (@follow2GD) February 26, 2016

Harding was the first to go, tweeting out that he was “let go” after a segment saying “it was valves decision.” This led to a lot of speculation and rumors until Gabe himself went to the Dota 2 subreddit and dropped his own bombs. Not only does Gabe say Valve has had problems with Harding before, he outright says “James is an ass.” Then switches focus to the entire production team and fires them too.

LADS ON THE PRODUCTION TEAM LOOKING FRESH THIS MORNING. pic.twitter.com/6XDCzKk2VF

— Owen Davies (@ODPixel) February 27, 2016

Gabe and Valve seem pretty happy with their choices, and despite not being very knowledgeable of this community, I’ve been told by a more active player that this was a good decision. Harding was already known to try and be funny more than he tried to be a good host.

This was Dota 2’s first major major of the year with a purse of three million dollars. Kind of crazy for all this to go down in the middle of the actual tournament, but it’s hard to be upset with Valve stepping in and enforcing their own standards.

The post Valve Fires Production Team; Host During A Dota 2 Major UPDATE appeared first on Gamesline.

Typically we would see Valve develop a Half Life game on their engines as both practice for their developers and a showpiece for potential licensees of the new engine. Source 2 was announced as a free engine for all developers to work on meaning Valve wouldn’t need their typical showpiece. I’m not sure what this means for the future of Half Life, if anything, but I hope this means we see more games out of Valve soon.

Original Story: Dota 2 is coming out with a beta that features big improvements to the game. This beta will be separate from the main game and is being called ‘Dota 2: Reborn‘. Reborn will feature an entire new interface and dashboard, custom games, a new engine, and whatever else they can pack into it. Valve is only trickling out details week by week, this week they focus on interface, next is custom games, leading up to the launch of the beta the week of June 29th. They do stress this is a beta and it will feature constant updates and bug fixes and they urge the community to report any bugs they find back to Valve.

The interface changes look major. It seems easier to, at a glance, find your way around what was a pretty cluttered dashboard. Now there is a big ‘Play Dota’ button in the bottom right hand corner. Your friends will be easier to wrangle and keep track of with upgraded party features, chat, an activity feed, per hero matchmaking ratings, and even playstyle graphs. They’ve also made it easier to search through the rather large hero menu and even allow the ability to demo a hero before jumping into a match with one. They’re also adding more features to the Dota TV and the tutorial sections of the game which will hopefully help out new players interested in MOBAs.

This is a pretty major update for Dota 2 considering most big updates focus in on individual heroes and not the entire engine. The separate beta is also a smart move since changing the core game, even a little bit, often leads to heady debate and arguments. And this way major changes can be made across the entire game before it’s made official and we start seeing the new engine show up at The International, Valve’s annual Dota 2 tournament. Will these changes be made official before The International or will Valve tinker around until afterward?

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