Admiralbulldog was recently warned for trying to stream Dota2 matches live on his personal Twitch. This came in the form of a DMCA claim that was issued by Twitch to the TI3 winner.

AdmiralBulldog obviously was unaware of any such rules and as such sought clarification from Valve.

DotaTV is the nomenclature for Valve’s spectating client for all live games within the Dota2 game. The Dota2 Client is the property of Valve, the game publisher and has been fine-tuned over several years to provide the best experience. Any player can watch third-party streams under the ‘Watch’ Tab within the client. However, recently AdmiralBulldog ran into trouble when he was streaming the Starladder stream on his personal Twitch channel. This caused a huge conflict of interest for the player who has his own set of advertisers and sponsors on his Twitch Stream.

The DotaTV provides a very convenient way for fans and viewers to experience the best quality of Dota2 as they would on their own computer. While Twitch streams might buffer and be subject to limitations by Twitch, watching a game inside the client provides an enhanced experience for all parties concerned. It is also the IP of Valve and as such, the final say with regards to the streaming of any content via DotaTV lies with Valve.

Admiral Bulldog

When AdmiralBulldog was watching the Starladder live stream, he was given a ban warning for illegally streaming third-party content via the DotaTV. This is a contentious issue since he was streaming via the DotaTV client.

Third party organisers have no copyright issues over content streamed via DotaTV.

But the third party tournament organisers also have to look out for their own interests in the form of viewership numbers and visibility. It is in the interest of everyone concerned to ensure that third-party organisers and tournament admins are not given the short end of the stick. Esports relies heavily on viewership numbers and it is but natural to witness these organisations trying to protect their numbers via various restrictions.

Casually watching some dotes while streaming as always, gets threatened to stop or be banned. can valve clarify on whats going on here — Henrik Ahnberg (@AdmiralBulldog) October 13, 2017

Admiral Bulldog has a huge fan following in the Dota2 community. The ex-TI winner definitely has been entertaining in his streams and Youtube videos.With Over 400,000 followers on Twitch; he is definitely one of the most loved Dota2 Streamers. Twitch issued a DMCA claim to AdmiralBulldog when he was streaming Starladder on his Twitch channel.

Obviously, this was a very unclear topic at the time, with several organisations and tournament organisers overlooking such said actions. But Star-ladder enforced their right to stop others from streaming their content.

The issue with popular streamers streaming tournament streams is that they wean away a significant chunk of the viewership numbers away from the original stream link. They can make money off the streams without undertaking any of the risks that the tournament organisers have undertaken.

The confusion that was created as a result of this was due to improper guidelines earlier. Valve owns the copyright to the DotaTV client and all the content streamed within the client. The lack of clarification meant that there was a conflict of interest in most of the cases where a well-known streamer would stream some tournament matches.But this is one of the first times that a premier tournament organisers decided to enforce the rules as they are.

Why is this bad?

Esports revenues are largely dependent on the viewership numbers. The higher the number of viewers, the more leverage you have with your sponsor. CS GO and League of Legends have been having insane viewership numbers and hence the influx of sponsors and money into these games. Dota2, despite its huge prize pools does not trump CS GO and other esports when it comes to viewership numbers. Of course Dota2 is a very niche game which requires a higher level of understanding and familiarity with the game compared to CS GO.

If an eminent personality in the scene is allowed to stream third party tournament streams on their Twitch / Youtube channel, it leads to a huge loss of brand awareness for the sponsors. When a player such as Admiralbulldog streams a match, he will keep his own sponsors and ad banners on the stream link.

Having multiple brands and sponsors on a single stream is definitely hurting the sponsors paying for the tournament. Often times, it can result in conflicting brands being portrayed on the same screen. Usually contracts involve a non-compete clause in a particular segment. As such differing brands definitely can result in a big legal problem for tournament organisers such as Starladder. Technically, sponsors and advertisers can withhold payment due to non-compliance of term conditions.

Valve’s response

In a surprising yet welcome swiftness, Valve was quick in their response to this subject. With a premier tournament organiser and a well known professional player involved, this subject matter had the potential to blow up into a major controversy.

Recently, as we’re preparing to get into the swing of a bunch of great tournaments, there has been a lot of discussion happening around who is allowed to broadcast professional Dota 2 matches. While there is a tendency to oversimplify issues like these, often times it takes a fair amount of effort to work through what the right outcome is for the community as a whole. With any change to any of our products we tend to start with a framing question of “What is best for our customers”. This means all customers, not just the ones who care about a professional play, but also those who ardently follow specific streamers, along with tournament operators and their sponsors. Generally, we tend to try to tread pretty lightly around areas where the community outside of Valve is doing a lot of the work, primarily because we don’t want to stifle invention that leads to someone doing something really cool that we hadn’t thought of. The community has built many beneficial things for itself — websites like Dotabuff, contributions to the Steam workshop, independent broadcast studios, sites like DatDota, streamers with unique communities of fans – and because of that we think that the community should have a broad license in terms of what is allowed. Hopefully, that background is useful when considering the specific issue of who should be broadcasting Dota 2 matches. Broadly speaking, we see two groups of fans (with some degree of overlap). Some fans follow competitive play – they have favourite teams, players, casters, tournaments — and want to consume content directly from tournament organizers who are producing events. Other fans have strong affinities to specific personalities, and they watch them play games, talk about games, and cast a variety of professional, amateur, and pub games. We want to make sure that there is content available that serves both groups of customers. To that end, in addition to the official, fully-produced streams from the tournament organizer itself, we believe that anyone should be able to broadcast a match from DotaTV for their audience. However, we don’t think they should do so in a commercial manner or in a way that directly competes with the tournament organizer’s stream. This means no advertising/branding overlays, and no sponsorships. It also means not using any of the official broadcast’s content such as caster audio, camerawork, overlays, interstitial content, and so on. Finally, this is not permission for studios to broadcast each other’s events. In general, everyone should play nicely together, and we think the boundaries should be pretty clear.

Main points of the PSA:

Anyone can broadcast from DotaTV

The broadcast should not include any advertising/branding overlays or sponsorships

Broadcasts cannot use any Broadcast content such as the Caster Audio, Camerawork, etc

Studios cannot broadcast each other’s events

This was a clarification that was needed in the Dota2 scene. With potential Intellectual Property conflicts, Valve’s swift action and ruleset definitely helped clear up the matter.

From my understanding, its now allowed to watch dota client games as long ads overlay are off, correct? — Henrik Ahnberg (@AdmiralBulldog) October 14, 2017

While anyone can stream any match from DotaTV, these streams will be subject to several limitations and rules.

No Advertising

No banners

No Sponsor mentions / names

No Broadcast production

No Broadcast Spectator view

This puts up a fine balance between the interests of Third party tournament organisers as well as the casual player who would want to stream any matches from the DotaTV client. While allowing any person to stream via the DotaTV client onto their personal Twitch / Youtube channels, it protects the propriety of third-party tournament organisers who spend several thousands of dollars in the production.

Beneficial to Dota2

With Dota2 coming up with a dedicated esports calendar schedule and circuit, it is important to set the ground rules for everyone concerned. Third party tournament organisers were shying away from the esports title a few months ago, mainly cause of the lack of clarity regarding the esports calendar year.

The variations in the roster also did not make it easy for any organisation to advertise and build their brand. Valve has constantly made changes which they think would ensure the development of a healthy esports scene. With these latest changes/clarifications, Valve has shown how serious they take their model of branding esports.

Valve’s model of running the esports scene surrounding their games is quite different from that of Blizzard or Riot Games. While Blizzard and Riot have undertaken a closed-door approach with their games, Valve allows any tournament organisers to make tournaments on their game.

This does not require any permissions/license fees.

However, in order to bring stability in a very volatile esports scene in Dota2, Valve introduced the esports calendar for the upcoming year.

Final thoughts

With this ruling, Organisers will be prepared to deal with the competition. At the same time, it does not put the incumbent organisations at a severe disadvantage. Having competition only makes everyone more efficient and provides the users with the best possible advantage. At the same time, there should be a distinct advantage for the tournament organisers.

After all, they are investing money into the venture and risking a lot with these tournaments. Having any third party stream their matches, and potentially benefit (either via donations/ subscriptions/advertisement) is detrimental to the event organisers.

Sources :