Racism in Dota 2: How Prevalent Is It, Pros Making Racist Remarks, And Valve’s Stance
There’s no surprise when someone says Dota 2 is a very toxic game. Some people might say trash-talking in Dota 2 pub games is part of the fun. Even in traditional sports and athletic contests, trash-talking is existent for the purpose of demoralizing or intimidating the opponent. But what if it gets more personal and hateful, like a racial attack fueled by racism instead of simple intimidation?
How Racist Are Dota 2 Players and Why Does it Happen
The constant trash-talking in Dota 2 matches are so common, it’s almost normal. When a game turns dire for the team, the most likely scene to happen is members making blames. Then, it advances from heated arguments into personal and racial attacks.
Why does it happen? It’s simple. Personal attacks are supposed to hurt more than simple words of insult based on their game skills. However, the best offense is a racial offense as it attacks someone’s cultural origin, something they don’t have control over.
Pro Players Making Racist Comments and Hate Speech
Racism has been present in the Dota 2 community for years now but it became a big issue only recently. It all started when a Complexity player, Skem, typed “gl CC” in a pro match after losing against a Chinese team. The c-word means something derogatory towards Chinese people and felt it was offensive so complexity kicked Skem from the team and issued a public apology.
Shortly after that, Filipino player Kuku of TNC typed the c-word in a public match. While they released an apology, they also tried to cover-up the incident with fake excuses on why it happened. It blew out of proportion so Valve stepped in and punished Kuku by banning him in a major tournament which was to be held in China at the time. Kuku faced several punishments from Valve and his organization, including a close call from participating to The International 9.
The most recent issue is about The International 8 winner 7ckingmad a.k.a. Ceb. A Reddit user shared his experience playing with Ceb in a public game where he made derogatory remarks towards Russian players. Ceb typed in “Russian whores,” “animals from Russia,” and “skyzefreniac.”
Russian player Solo then made a statement that he will not participate in an upcoming tournament unless Valve openly speaks about the racism issues in the Dota 2 scene. A few days later, Solo released another statement saying they’re working on a long-term solution about the issue.
Valve’s Stance
Meanwhile, another Reddit user posted a collection of pro players’ chat in public games. It looked like a lot of other pro players make serious racist comments.
Obviously, racism and profanity are very rampant in Dota 2. As far as this issue is concerned, Valve’s latest statement said it’s the organizations’ responsibility to handle the behaviour of their players. However, they did not release a definite policy.
Valve was acting very inconsistent when they gave Kuku punishment while having deaf ears over Ceb’s more serious remarks. There are many possible steps Valve can make to solve this issue. For starters, they can add a profanity filter in the game.
