English-speaking Dota 2 broadcast talent covering the South American Dota Pro Circuit announced a strike to show their dissatisfaction with the meager compensation they receive for their services.
The announcement came in the form of a tweet by Muriëlle “Kips” Huisman, who has been hosting division one of the SA DPC. Kips claimed that a caster working in the Eastern European DPC division earned more than five talents working in the SA division one for a best-of-three series.
This has also been an ongoing situation as a decent number of SA talent decided to sit the 2023 season out due to organizers’ unwillingness to make any improvements. According to Kips, BTS BR even declined to negotiate with the talent and decided to fill their places with local casters from SA.
Related: Valve, where’s SA’s money?: Organizers allegedly haven’t paid SA Dota teams for the 2022 DPC season
Since local talents were put on the spot and were required to cast in a language that they weren’t used to, the quality suffered. The lack of experienced talent and staff in the SA DPC also showed its effects on chat moderation as viewers started going rampant with various not-safe-for-work (NSFW) spam messages. The organizers tried to bring in community casters to the SA DPC for free throughout the season, and while there’s nothing wrong with giving a chance to up-and-coming casters and talent, doing it upset fans looking for quality during SA’s premiere event.
At the time of writing, neither ESB, the current organizers of SA DPC, nor BTS BR commented on the matter.
