When the Majors were announced on April 24, 2015 there was plenty of excitement in the Dota 2 community. In the announcement blog post, Valve talked about “improving the competitive landscape as a whole,” which is a an admirable goal. They argued that roster stability was suffering and that the scene could use more structure year-round, instead of focusing on just The International once a year.

It might seem like after two Major events we haven’t seen any sweeping change to the competitive landscape of Dota 2 just yet, but Kyle “swindlezz” Freedman, Captain and offlaner for compLexity Gaming, sees improvement. “In the past teams would seriously regress for quite some time after TI, with things only getting serious around February. Now there’s ALWAYS something to play for, and the quality of the Dota has been increasing rapidly.”

Despite the improvements in competitive play, the community focus has been fixated more on the problems than the great games at the Shanghai Major. If you somehow missed all the drama, here’s a quick breakdown — the tournaments’ image got off to a poor start with delays and production issues and got worse when both English host James “2GD” Harding and the English production crew KeyTV were fired on the second day of the group stage. Issues continued throughout the event and the community feasted on the proverbial buffet of drama.

English caster David “LD” Gorman’s experience on the first day of the group stage gives a good feel for some of the difficulties faced by those working at the event.

As the first person casting a game on the secondary stream, he was faced with several issues that remained from set up. Getting the stream online was a challenge in itself because “they didn’t have the encoding PC set up, it wasn’t getting the casters video feed, the caster computer had Chinese Windows, steam was in Chinese I couldn’t log into steam with the authenticator and I couldn’t access my Gmail account where my authentication code was being sent because of the Great Firewall of China. The headsets were really cheap and just low quality, there was a lot of interference, DotaTV audio wasn’t set up, basically… I mean to be perfectly frank the whole thing had just been slapped together, not tested at all and was not remotely ready to go. My first best-of-three of the event was very little actual casting as far as my mental focus and very much me trying to troubleshoot tech issues as I went along.”

Things weren’t as bad for the players but as OG’s Manager Evany tells us, there were still challenges she felt unequipped to deal with. “Even though I spoke the language, there are issues that cannot be resolved or are not within your capacity, like shared group stage rooms and non-soundproof booths.” She went on to explain what led to OG’s players needing to wear respiration masks during their best-of-one match against Virtus.pro. “The Radiant booth had an irritant that stung the players’ eyes and respiratory system so they were coughing and had labored breathing. Thankfully, Valve had the booth fully ventilated and detoxed overnight.”

Even though the community was understandably focused on delays and production issues, people in Shanghai were doing their best to put on an entertaining tournament, even in a less than ideal work environment.

Overwhelmingly, those who were there said that the community should not forget the numerous people who worked long hours to ensure that the show went on. Translators, production staff Bryan “Kpoptosis” Heren, Rob “Icelement” James, hosts Jorien "Sheever" van der Heijden and Dakota "KotLguy" Cox, Valve staff Bruno, Tad and Sharon and both Perfect World and MarsTV staff were all mentioned when we asked for shout outs.

Perhaps the most public story from behind the scenes of the Shanghai Major English production was that of Bonnie, who was hired as a translator but became the de facto English production director when things went wrong at the event.

From the beginning of the group stage, Bonnie’s responsibilities were what many might call overwhelming. She was the sole point of contact between English speaking talent and Chinese event staff. She described many duties, including “relaying cues and messages [during broadcast] from the production director to talent, vice versa. This meant that I was to be present as long as the broadcast was on, there was nobody to change shifts with.”

As we know, the first day of production was plagued with issues. As Bonnie says, “Valve staff stepped in after monitoring the first BO3 and asked why it was such a disaster. They saw the issues and told the crew that it was crucial that they listen to my directions. That was how I got ‘promoted’ from ‘Little Translator Girl’ to production director. The crew’s director was blatantly unhappy and sat in his chair seething silently for the rest of the day.”

Basically directing the entire English main broadcast now hope u all like it! If there are mistakes pls forgive 😲 pic.twitter.com/rbLDJwDYbB — Bonnie (@BonnieElvira) February 26, 2016

After KeyTV was fired, the new crew did not speak English either so Bonnie remained director of the English production. She said the extent of her job included cueing talent and directing the show (which included cueing the CG operator, switcher and audio operator as well as running sound checks and monitoring audio levels). On top of that, she was responsible for monitoring streaming PCs to catch when the stream crashed as well as running between the analyst desk and control room between segments because there was no floor director — the person on set responsible for relaying information between the control room and talent.

Things weren’t all bad in the English production room. When Sheever appeared on the panel as a replacement host, you would be forgiven for assuming that her name key was a result of the language barrier, but in fact it was a little bit of 2GD humor living on. As Bonnie put it, “James asked for his name tag to be ‘Sir 2GD’. When it was Sheever’s turn to go on camera, we thought it would be fun to keep the name tag consistent, so ‘Lady Sheever’ was born!”

There were two big factors behind the issues, according to many of those who attended the event. The first was the proximity to Chinese New Year. Much like Christmas and New Year’s for some in the West, Chinese New Year is the time of year when large numbers of people get time off work and travel to visit family, and it fell just a few weeks before the start of the event. An inadequate amount of on-site preparation in the lead-up to the event is understandable in this light.

The other reason often cited is a cultural barrier on top of the language barrier. “here’s definitely a culture of saving face in China … I had never experienced it prior,” LD said. “When you would bring up an issue … the first words out of their mouth more often than not would be explaining how they didn’t cause that problem.” Whereas LD was used to a Western view of problem solving that looks for a fix no matter where the problem originated, this was not the approach of the event staff and there was a lack of understanding between the two cultures.

This is an extremely interesting read and helps me understand some of the issues we've experienced in Chinahttps://t.co/9U37wq8Q5e — Kyle Bautista (@coL_Beef) February 29, 2016

You might think that Valve could have seen this coming and course corrected but even though the Majors are known to the community as Valve events, the amount of actual Valve involvement seems to have been quite minimal. Even casters like LD weren’t aware of the lack of Valve involvement until things went wrong.

“I think initially Valve’s idea was to outsource pretty much the entire production and event operation,” he said. “It seemed like they initially wanted to have a very hands off approach. It worked ok with the Frankfurt Major, there were some issues there but overall it was a pretty solid event. I think certainly good enough that Valve was happy with that model, so probably because of that coming into this Major they weren’t as involved as they probably needed to be.”

After the issues surrounding the Shanghai Major blew up online and even caught the attention of those outside of the Dota 2 community, Valve decided to do something that they almost never do — they made a statement. In that statement, tagged onto the end of the blog post celebrating the Shanghai Major champions, Valve acknowledged the disappointment surrounding the event and promised that they plan to “[increase their] involvement moving forward to ensure that future events deliver a high-quality experience.”

Hopes are high that this means much higher levels of oversight at future Majors, but with a company that is as tight-lipped as Valve, it is hard to say what will change. Coming in to the event, the Beyond the Summit crew had first-hand experience working with KeyTV at the Nanyang Championships in late 2015 but LD says that they were never asked about those experiences. In fact, the biggest surprise for him was “not that there were issues, but that they were the same issues as a very similar event that had a Chinese production crew and an English broadcast.”

Bonnie’s situation is case in point that expecting a Chinese production crew to be able to direct a smooth English broadcast is unreasonable. A live broadcast is a complex beast that requires the wrangling of many elements, which only goes smoothly when all the parts are able to communicate with the others. This lesson was learned the hard way in Shanghai.

In all likelihood, the hands-off approach that it seems Valve took leading up to the Shanghai Major likely means they had little or nothing to do with the selection of the production crew. That said, those who attended the event agree that the probability of Valve not learning from this experience is very low. According to Kyle “Beef” Bautista, the general manager of compLexity Gaming, the learning process has already begun. “Valve wanted as much feedback as they could get, and I feel they will do their best to provide that feedback and suggestions for solutions to the future organizers, producers, admins, etc.”

This brings us back to the essential question: is the Majors system doing what it was built to do? Is the Dota 2 scene on track to continued growth? LD has a very positive outlook on how the scene will improve after an event like Shanghai.

“Regardless of what happens ... I don’t think we’re ever going to see a Major worse than the Shanghai Major in terms of the issues that we saw,” he said.

“A lot of that is because Valve, when they put their mind, their time and their energy to it, they do a great job. If you look at TI ... they really paved the way for growth in the scene, for improvement in production value, in terms of the treatment for players, the talent and the viewing experience for fans. Those events were pioneering events for Dota 2 and even for esports in a lot of ways.”

As for the best thing about the Majors system so far, LD believes “we haven’t actually seen it yet, but we’re about to, which is bringing truly premiere Dota experiences to locations around the world … if you look at Dota 2 events, the biggest SEA event [so far] is the Nanyang Championships”.

With the Manila Major on the horizon, the Southeast Asian region is in for a show like no other, and LD has high hopes for the event. “I am excited for the Manila Major, PGL has a great track record, it will definitely be a better event, I’m very confident about that simply because I have a lot of faith in them, the Pinoy fans are absolutely crazy. I haven’t been there yet but I’ve heard stories from Godz so I’m really excited, I hope I get to go and meet them.”

The Majors seem to have succeeded in giving teams year-round goals to strive for and giving spectators from around the world a more local place to watch top tier Dota 2 live, but when it comes to roster stability the system may have fallen short. Opinions are mixed on how effective the move to roster lock periods has been. LD believes that the Majors “are so big any time that you don’t make it to one you might as well start afresh because all the [prize pools at] other events combined don’t really add up to one Major, let alone to TI, so if the goal is to promote roster stability we haven’t gotten there.”

Team managers have a different perspective on roster stability. Evany believes the system just delays the inevitable, saying “there is more incentive to stay together … However a team that isn’t on the same page in terms of how to resolve issues, be it in-game or personal, will resort to roster changes whether or not the system is in place.”

Bautista sees potential for the system, but adds, “I think that having more transparency on the invites to Majors/TI would greatly improve stability. If a team knows exactly how much staying together improves their chances at an invite they are provided more incentive to remain stable. A points-based invite system or something public is really needed.”

Obviously, roster stability is something that’s going to take more than a Majors system to improve, but the scene overall does seem to have benefited, Shanghai disaster and all. As LD put it, “the community has every right to be outraged, talent have a right to be frustrated, people behind the scenes have a right to be annoyed with Valve but in the long run this is a wake up call for them and I think it’s going to mean a lot of positive things for our scene.”

Annabelle "Abelle" Fischer is a writer for theScore esports with a love for Dota 2, birds and cheese. You can follow her on Twitter.