The world of pro Dota 2 is no stranger to drama and controversy. Gabe Newell once called a esports host an “ass” and fired him mid broadcast after he opened the show with jokes about Chinese porn. Players have written 7500-word blog posts about not being paid. And a tournament’s Major status was revoked mere weeks before the event because players were worried about failing Filipino drug tests.
But now there is another controversy in the world of Dota involving racism, massively offensive comments, and players having to make a stand in order to get some kind of acknowledgement from Valve.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS LANGUAGE SOME MAY FIND OFFENSIVE
“u ruin
ur own mmr
u sad fucker
its all you have
in your life
i make money from dota
u third world dog
and u runin the the only thing u have
in your life
and you think i give a shit
about ur miserable situation”
“dont buy wards
its pointless
let these russian whores
lose mmr
they would sell their mother
for mmr
and they ruin their own game
fucking skyzefreniac
animals
from russia”
These are messages posted in the team chat in a game of Dota 2 by Sébastien “Ceb” Debs, the off-lane player for professional team OG and reigning TI champion. The match was a standard Dota 2 game where Ceb was put on a team with some players from Russia, the game did not go favourably for his team, and Ceb’s version of events state the Russian players were “toxic” and “game-ruining.”
Regardless of the situation that lead to these words being said, clearly no-one, especially not one of the most public figures in Dota, should be saying things such as this, but it is unfortunately a relatively common occurrence in Dota 2 matches.