PGL’s Dota 2 stream was temporarily taken over by animated short Big Buck Bunny ahead of TI11 Group Stage Day 1 broadcast
You should always start any event with a bang, and PGL certainly delivered as they left viewers speechless by broadcasting an animated short with the mysterious phrase PGM A BKP overlaid over it. The broadcast went live approximately twenty minutes before the start of the tournament on the PGL_Dota 2 twitch channel, on the A stream. It lasted around six minutes, before being cut off during the credits.
The film broadcast appears to be Big Buck Bunny, a 60fps 4k video created by the Blender Foundation to advertise the capabilities of blender. The short, which showcases a rabbit’s battle with some mischievous rodents and squirrels, was first created in 2008, however this appears to be a 2014 re-render.
Just what on earth was that?
The film is a free-to-use, high resolution, high frame rate video. Available in UHD 4k and 60fps, it would be the perfect film to test your stream quality, for instance, if you were about to broadcast the biggest tournament in Dota 2.
And that’s the answer. PGL made a human error and accidentally broadcast a test broadcast that was likely only supposed to be viewed internally. Not the end of the world!
What does PGM A BKP mean?
PGM A BKP seems to be a piece of test text overlaid across the video to test, well, overlays. It may be an abbreviation, or just nonsense letters strung together to make a set of ‘words’ that spread across the whole broadcast.
That didn’t stop Twitch chat from immediately latching onto the phrase and spamming it. And now, even as the main broadcast has started there are the occasional PGM A BKP spams in chat. Really, the Dota 2 community will latch onto any meme it can.
The International 2022 is live now on PGL’s stream. We don’t think we’ll be seeing any more appearances of Big Buck Bunny, but we can't rule anything out. Stay tuned for our TI11 coverage!