Valve made a formal announcement of The International 2022 broadcast by introducing talent capsules to the game for all five languages, which brought controversies and a plethora of unanswered questions.
Talent choices and remote broadcast
The International 2022 is set to begin next Saturday, on the 8th of October 2022 with the Last Chance Qualifiers held on LAN in Singapore. However, with the announcement of the talent line-up for the 5 language broadcast, it was confirmed by several of the invited talents that the broadcast will be done remotely.
Rumours of the English broadcast being set up in Norway have circulated on social media channels for a couple of weeks now. Last night several members of the community confirmed that indeed, the broadcast will be working remote from Oslo, Norway.
However, last week Norway suspended the visa agreement with Russia due to the war waged against Ukraine. Therefore, it was revealed now that the entire Russian broadcast has been moved from Norway to Kazakhstan in order to facilitate the travel for the rather large number of Russian talent invited to The International 2022. This year’s TI features a total of 37 Russian personalities and just 7 Ukrainians.
More so, some of the most prominent Ukrainian figures in Dota 2, Danil "Dendi" Ishutin and Vitalii "v1lat" Volochai, Roman Vladimirovich "CaspeRRR" Lepokhin, Mykhailo "Olsior" Zvieriev are missing from the talent list.
At the same time, among the Russian talents is the Russian player Alexey "nongrata" Vasilyev, who has promoted on his stream a pro-war Russian symbol.
While nothing has been publically confirmed by Valve, according to multiple sources, the Russian broadcast will be operated by the Russian betting company BetBoom, which has also operated the Eastern Europe regional qualifiers for TI2022
With two of the biggest esports tournaments happening almost at the same time, as League of Legends World Championship 2022 kicked off last night, the discrepancies between how Valve and Riot Games approached the current political context couldn’t be more different.
Worlds 2022 for instance, is officially broadcast in 24 languages, but it features no Russian broadcast.
While there are numerous concerns regarding the Russian broadcast, the English talent has also a few surprises, featuring personalities who haven’t been working any Dota 2 event in years invited over those who have consistently delivered official commentary for the regional leagues.
On the production side of things, one of the most notable exclusions is Jonathan "PimpmuckL" Liebig, who is regarded as one of the best observers.
Talent capsule autographs
With TI 2022 Valve has introduced teams, players and talent capsules, as opposed to individual autographs that were used in previous editions. Each talent capsule features stickers divided into four categories, Standard, Glitter, Holo, and Gold, for the entire line-up for a specific language, which is up to 40+ people featured in the same capsule. However, only the Holo and Gold stickers come with a voice line of the respective talent, which means that those who would like to have a specific personality voice line, have actually a 1 in 1196, below 1% chance of getting it.
On the bright side, the few lucky ones who will receive a voice line drop will be pleased to learn that those are permanent and will not vanish from their chat wheels at the end of The International 2022.
Supporter's Club Fan Bundles
In the same update, Valve has brought back the Supporter's Club Fan Bundles, which give the fans the opportunity to directly support a team of their liking. The bundles come in three different flavours, Bronze, Silver and Gold and based on their value, they contain sprays, voice lines, emoticons and wallpapers of the chosen team.
