Valve cancels fourth Major and Minor and It’s Bad News for teams

It’s yet another devastating news coming from Valve, just when DOTA2 fans thought that the Los Angeles major being postponed might be the worst news they hear. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come.

Yesterday, the DOTA2 Twitter page announced that the fourth major and minor will be cancelled due to the worsening Covid-19 outbreak. Since it involves a huge gathering of participants, whether if you’re a pro player, a caster, the production team or the viewers themselves, it’s their health that is at risk here, thus Valve did it for the greater good. To add salt to injury, they are also considering whether if the fifth and final major of this DPC season should be called off as well.

Epicenter Twitter Reactions

From the tweet itself, many discussions and predictions were raised about the teams which have yet to set their foot in the DPC rankings, and the opportunities that these teams would be missing out. Of course, one of those teams that came across everyone’s mind is the TI8 finalist, PSG.LGD. Once hailed as the strongest Chinese team in TI8 and still formidable in TI9, these days the Chinese powerhouse doesn’t even make it into the Esports headlines. Especially after failing to qualify for two consecutive majors. To make things even worse they couldn’t even pass the open qualifiers.

The PSG.LGD social media page has publicly spoken to its fans:

They are of course, implying that there wouldn’t be any DPC events left for them to compete in due to Valve’s cancellation of the fourth major. That said, the boys still have their last resort, which is the International 2020 regional qualifiers.

However, competition would be much more difficult than any of the DPC events have to offer. PSG.LGD would still need to play through the hellish and unforgiving open qualifiers before they can even make it into the regional qualifiers. It would definitely be exciting to see if LGD could pull off the “team OG TI8 run”, where team OG went from open qualifiers to becoming the TI8 Champions. But hey, one can only hope.

Further sentiments

Sockshka, (OG’s coach) said that he had great memories playing there last year (as in he actually played as stand-in for his team), looking forward to it but hey, it’s for everyone’s best interest, health. Then, there’s Sheever who is suggesting to bring back the good ole’ online tourneys that everyone used to enjoy.

Team Secret’s Twitter page also shared some thoughts about their DPC journey. They are taking a challenging turn but they are feeling optimistic as they look towards their next stop, the tournament hosted by ONE Esports. ONE Esports are the organizers of the fifth and final, Singapore Major. But, Team Secret are most likely talking about the other LAN tournament, the ONE Esports Dota 2 Invitational Jakarta, which is unfortunately postponed from 17^th April to the end of 2020.

Dota 2 TI 2020 implications

As the days go by, an important discussion is raised heavily in the DOTA2 community. How are teams going to be selected for the International 2020?

With only two remaining majors (potentially only one), competing teams would definitely feel that it would be unfair for the current teams in top 12 DPC rankings to grab the direct invite to TI10 since the DPC season did not run its complete course.

One of the more popular suggestions to bring back direct invites for teams that have performed well recently. This would include the fearsome two-time consecutive TI champions, team OG. However, this still doesn’t seem fair, especially for new teams who are only starting their career with no recognition. Perhaps increasing the number of regional qualifier slots while reducing the direct invites would seem fair for every team. This would give more teams a shot at qualifying for TI10, considering the dire circumstances.

Regardless, it’s now up to Valve to make the decisive move on whether the last major stays and what the TI10 qualification requirements are. Hopefully, Covid-19 will subside by the time it is August, when the International 2020 is set to hold. Stay tuned for more updates.