After six straight appearances at Dota 2’s The International, legendary organization OG will be watching this year’s edition from the sidelines. Despite a strong finish at DreamLeague Season 21 last week, OG veteran Sébastien “Ceb” Debs summed up the team’s 2023 bluntly: “I think this last season was like hell on Earth for the boys.”
The two-time TI champion lamented on a season that went begging for the roster in a Sept. 29 interview with Pedro Romero at Blix.gg. Not all of it was on OG, to be fair; between the war in Ukraine, visa troubles, last-minute roster changes, and the general pressure of competition, the squad’s season was about as unstable as it gets.
“It’s very depressing to put in a lot of effort and when you’re ready to show what you’ve worked on, something that’s not related to Dota stops you,” Ceb said, noting that in all of his years competing and coaching Dota, this year was one of the most challenging yet.
OG struggled to field a consistent five over the course of the year with Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf leaving before the season began, Russian reps Evgenii “Chu” Makarov and Mikhail “Misha” Agatov moving into coaching roles, Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin departing the roster a fortnight ago, Ivan “MinD_ContRoL” Ivanov standing in twice and Ceb himself returning to help get the team through Riyadh Masters and DreamLeague.
Ceb acknowledged some of these issues affected other squads but the frequency in which OG suffered through them certainly didn’t help things. “It’s really, really hard to build a project and build up a team when you don’t have stability and you don’t have the same people throughout the season,” he said to Blix, describing himself as a “fireman” extinguishing spot fires every event.
OG entered the TI 12 qualifier in poor form after failing to exit the group stages in Riyadh and at DreamLeague Season 20 but had amassed enough DPC points to land a top seed for the all-important qualifier. Alas, it wasn’t to be for the squad, who lost out to Team Secret and Quest—the latter of whom made it to the big dance.
In all, OG’s best result of the year came at the pre-TI season close at DreamLeague Season 21. Their performances at the DPC Western Europe Tours one and two got them a spot in the first Major of the year at ESL One Berlin, but otherwise it’s been a year to forget for Ceb and OG.
Ceb described missing TI 12 as “a huge blunder,” and that OG belongs at the pinnacle of Dota fighting it out for the trophy. “The OG Dota team doesn’t belong anywhere besides competing at the top for titles and whenever we’re far from that, then there is a lot of self-reflection that has to be made.”
He highlighted that, if substitutes existed in Dota, there would be less of an impact on teams who were missing players due to outside factors. On 14 occasions were teams forced to substitute players during tier one events in 2023 according to Liquipedia—from visa issues to player illness.
If a team had a substitute one or two players who knew the squad’s style well and could keep the squad competitively viable. “You just have to bring somebody that’s completely new to the project, to the team,” Ceb said, explaining that, despite it seeming like only one-fifth of the roster is different, the setbacks ripple throughout the entire unit.
As such, Ceb’s focus for next season is on roster stability—building up a core five that can make it to events and consistently play together on the server. From there, the sky is the limit.
As for himself? The French veteran has gone from active player to coaching the squad, to retirement for over a year—yet he still finds himself unable to lay down the mouse and keyboard.
For this, Ceb credits the game itself. “The beauty of Dota is that you’re never the best,” he said, adding that claiming trophies then finding himself eliminated from the next tournament forces him “back to the lab.” It’s here that Ceb thrives, with the challenge of returning to the summit of Dota the most enjoyable part of the game.
We’ll see what form OG takes next later in December, when it’s possible we’ll catch Ceb and the crew in action at ESL One Kuala Lumpur.
