Yesterday, Valve released a blog post on the update for Community Casts for The International.
Yesterday, Valve released a blogpost highlighting the rules for Community casts for the International. In the blog post, Valve mentions two biggest points. First, as per usual for previous TIs, anyone can do a community broadcast as long as they take it from DOTA TV and they're providing self-made content, while being non-commercial.
Valve also announced they have given a few video platforms the authority to create custom casts. These custom casts are categorized as commercial casts and hence are not permitted under Valve's community stream policy.
For these commercial casts a 15 minute streaming delay is being imposed. The video platforms who employ commercial casters all agreed to this delay in their license agreements, and it should not have come as a surprise to them.
Therefore, a 15 minute on-stream delay will be mandatory for all commercial casts. Valve also mentioned that this rule has been agreed by the video platforms who employ commercial casters for custom casts, and that they should not be surprised by this.
CN Streamers were Furious, What Happened?
Chinese video platforms Huya and Douyu released an announcement regarding the broadcasting rule.
The announcements state that the employed streamers are now required to put on a 15 minute delay on their streams. This news was shocking to the streamers and have created a massive outbreak within the community. Valve has mostly entered into agreements with Chinese platforms for commercial casts as a result of which the 15-minute delay has been imposed.
Streamers React
The announcements from DouYu and Huya were released a few hours after The International started. Hence, many of the streamers were surprised and shocked by it. They were furious because interaction with fans and viewers is a big part of their streams and the 15 minute mandatory delay will basically cut that off.
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Some of the biggest streamers on each video platform like former TI 7 runner up, Sccc` and legendary player, longdd from Huya ; TI2 champion YYF from DouYu and many more showed their frustration on this sudden news.
I don't understand, if a delay is required, shouldn't this be applied to everyone? Shouldn't this be agreed and settled before The International started? What is this sudden change?
I've watched 9 years of The Internationals, I've played so many years of games. We were never allowed to watch the mainstream before and that's whatever. But a mandatory delay on-stream now. Can you not, don't you feel disgusting?
I'm fine with the mandatory delay, but I'm disgusted by the differential treatment. We are required to apply a 15 minute delay on-stream that stops our interaction with viewers, why not just impose an in-game delay on client? I've watched so many TIs, this year is so suffering.
Many of them stopped streaming awhile after they applied the 15 minute delay to streams as there were too much complaints from viewers.
OLD BOYS (OB)
Retired pro-player-turned-streamers are very influential in China, for example the "Old Boys" (OB). They are a group consisting of many former pro players that have a lot of achievements in the history of Dota 1 and Dota 2. For example, former TI 2 winners - YYF and Zhou, legendary players longdd, ZSMJ and many other more.
Most of them have grown to be the faces of different video platforms in China, for example YYF for DouYu and longdd for Huya. They do a lot of watch parties for different tournaments while sharing stories about the scene, hence viewers more often prefer to watch their streams compared to the official broadcast streams.
The Old Boys streamers were not pleased with their platforms for failing to announce these rules before the start of the International. They also feel slighted due to the differential treatment for Chinese streamers. The 15-minute delay does not apply to most of the Western streamers such as GorgC.
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