With the Lima Major almost upon us, there are rumblings in the background from current and retired players alike. One such incident happened with the ex-EG captain and TI5 winner Peter Dager, better known to fans and players as ppd, when he made some bold claims about the state of the Dota 2 scene as it stands today. His opinion, which he posted on Twitter on Feb. 20, was especially targeted toward teams and organizers, talking about what they can do better instead of focusing all of their energy on winning.
After his stint as the coach for Team Alliance, the legendary captain now works as a Programs Operations Manager at Esports Engine, an event-organizing company. Peter talked about how bloated the esports organizations have now become, elaborating on this by saying that these organizations have learned to live off their investments instead of using them to make more money.
With ppd’s earlier stance about how a smaller prize pool is not a big issue for truly hungry pro players, his current approach mentions that the players on each team should be encouraged to use their brand to profit off their current fame. He followed that up by saying that these teams should work on doing this lest they get replaced by newer teams that organize themselves better.
When asked about what kind of monetization model these teams can follow, ppd said products based on the team and players would work well. Even “something as mundane as toilet paper” would work with the right approach is what he firmly believes. Whether esports organizations will take this advice seriously or not is yet to be seen.
