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The International 10 in Stockholm
The International 10 haunted by various problems since its announcement. First, Valve announced that the anniversary TI10 would be held in Stockholm, Sweden. The authorities in that country are familiar with esports and usually support the tournaments which take place in Sweden. However, this time in the summer, the Swedish authorities banned events with a live audience in the country. This meant that not only The International, but also CS:GO PGL Major Stockholm 2021 would be threatened.
The management of tournament operator PGL, which organized the production for The International, began to think about what to do with the planned TI. And while the Swedish esports community was pressing the Swedish authorities to allow the events to take place, PGL decided to move The International 10 to Bucharest, Romania. By the way, Swedish esports bigwigs like TI3 champion and Alliance co-founder Jonatan “Loda” Berg and Ninjas in Pyjamas CEO Hicham Chahine still defended their right to host esports events with a live audience in Sweden. The mayor of Stockholm supported the esports stakeholders and the central government of Sweden allowed the crowd to be admitted to the stands.
Meanwhile TI10 goes to Romania
Valve decided not to cancel its decision and give PGL all the cards in their hands, allowing the event in Bucharest at National Arena. Meanwhile, PGL is not moving their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major from Stockholm to another location, although it was scheduled for the same month as TI10.
The COVID outbreak in Romania made itself felt in early fall. At the same time, mass demonstrations related to COVID restrictions are taking place in Romania. This has exacerbated the situation.
Even before The International began, no one knew about the opportunities of the players from Malaysia to visit the tournament. However, the Malaysian authorities gave the green light and players were able to come to the tournament.
Just a few days after the teams began to gather in Bucharest there was a first reports of COVID-19 infection of some of the players in the Chinese social network Weibo. A little later it turns out that the full roster of Team Aster, including managers and assistants are infected with coronavirus, as well as the player Invictus Gaming Thiay “JT-“Jun Wen.
After several cases of COVID-19 infections, Valve decided to hold The International 10 without the crowd. This decision was also made based on the horrifying statistics of those infected in Romania. The 55,000 National Arena in Bucharest will be empty for TI10.
The community immediately began criticizing PGL for insufficient measures of safety, which had terrible consequences. Later some Weibo user also reported that Team Aster celebrated the birthday of one of the players, Du “Monet” Peng, with a very big spread. The team visited many restaurants and had contact with many people, so it is not surprising that Team Aster was infected with COVID-19. Thus, it turns out that the infection is mostly the fault of the players and management of Team Aster, rather than PGL.
Of course, the precautions at the tournament can hardly be called perfect, because the time of arrival of the teams was different, so PGL couldn’t organize a common bubble mode for all teams.
Nevertheless, The International 10 has strict rules of conduct during the pandemic. Everyone who is at TI is required to take a quick COVID antigen test every morning and move around strictly wearing masks. No one is allowed to leave the hotel. There are only a few zones when the people can contact with each other at TI10.
This is not TI level of conditions
The community hasn’t stopped criticizing PGL because a new scandal has erupted online. Team Spirit players posted photos from their practice rooms. They showed that the rooms were so small that the players couldn’t move the back of their chairs because they were sitting very close to each other. Team Spirit manager Dmitry “Korb3n” Belov sarcastically noted that such uncomfortable practice rooms were given to teams at the bottom of the DPC list.
The players computers were often without Internet access, and the Windows system installed was not activated.
Later PGL corrected this deficiency by providing players with more comfortable and spacious rooms, and apologized.
There were also complaints among players and talents about the quality of the food in the hotel, but many noted the opposite. Apparently, these complaints are due to the fact that the organizers are under very strict quarantine conditions. Players are not able just to eat freely in the restaurant. The hospitality team just brought the food to their rooms in cardboard lunch boxes. Of course, this spoils the impression of what is happening, because this kind of service and hospitality is not the level of The International.
We are less than 12 hours away from the start of TI10. Despite the fact that the event has a lot of problems before its start, the community is hoping that the games will brighten the unpleasant aftertaste of the mistakes made by contractors, players and Valve. The reputation of the largest tournament with the largest prize pool in the history of esports is at stake. Any reputational damage will fall on Valve’s shoulders. Let’s hope The International 10 leaves the best memories in the future and it will not be a repeating of Shanghai Major 2016.