ashecitism
Member
Talent as in host, caster, panelists. Signatures as in digital signatures. And TI as in the Dota 2 International. This is from the other thread about Valve kicking James aka 2GD (the host) and Gabe calling him an ass on reddit. James responded with a 16 page doc. A lot of it isn't relevant to the situation, but this was interesting:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B061Rs4gw4zkCec35Q5v2r576e_Jd6pJfrT_5_GZ74I/preview
edit: another caster chimed in
posted on reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/47u067/this_scared_panel_is_boring/d0fw253
latest tweets by Purge
edit2:
She does cosmetics items.
edit3: Russian caster
edit4: community/stats guy
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comm...d_to_pay_talent_through_ingame_images/d0fpxzu
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B061Rs4gw4zkCec35Q5v2r576e_Jd6pJfrT_5_GZ74I/preview
So History Time.
I host TI2, Valves second international. I was hired as a host. I knew some about dota2 but not much. I turned up, No one at Valve had much of a vision of what the hosting would be like apart from Ali wanted sports broadcasting. He didn’t really push for it but you could tell every segment if we had too much… fun? He was asking us to tone it down a bit. Despite the huge reception myself, Godz, Bruno, Nebula were getting for our hosting roll.
I should also point out Valve weren’t controlling back then with our input, they didn’t act like they knew best. Infact they were very receptive of feedback. Bruno wasn’t even meant to be on the panel. But I asked if he could join because I feel inlove with the guys style of humour. We put him on the panel and it was a blast. The whole event was a hit.
The only small problem I saw while there after talking with others was... no one was getting paid….. Only me? I’m like wtf… So you're paying me because I’m not involved in dota 2. but your dota 2 casters are not getting paid. Owning my own agency and working with countless talent over the years. This for me is a big no no. And i'm a problem solver, I don't shy away from trying to help even If i am the ‘annoying guy’ you have to deal with. So, I start conversations with Valve during the evening over drinks. Explain that, These people make very little all year round atm. But they help build your community, they help market your game. If they leave this event paid they can continue to put time and effort into Dota 2, Also they get to tell their families and loved ones, this is their job (it's hard to sell your parents on this type of job. you want to shout about video games for a living, but once you get a pay cheque, things do change!). If they don’t have this income, they might stop due to financial restraints. I sell them on the idea of payment. Maybe they were going to do it themselves, but the talks they gave me was it's good for their brands to be here. The one Valve employee I spoke to the most who kicks ass obviously talked with the team and by the end of the event and EVERYONE got paid! Thank you for helping fight for us! I don’t think I could have done it without your influence.
Either way, We finish the event. Its a hit. everyone is getting along well and we are all happy, including Ali! TI2 10/10
I host TI3, One year later I’m invited back. Talent turn up. We all have payment sorted before the event. Life is good. we nail the event. There are of course small problems, but overall everyone is great to work with. Valve upped the production. Best TI Finals ever!
I come away from the event very happy, we all get on including Ali! TI3 10/10
I host Ti4,
Group Stage I am in a weird mindset for this one. Valve have made a lot of decisions that has taken the event backwards in my opinion, further away from esports and more into sports. including these problems we do not get paid for our time as hosts only signatures…
Remember those? Well basically our pay was 0. but we got money every time someone would buy an item and add our ingame signature. So if you added my signature for a dollar. I think I got 50c or the whole dollar. I cannot remember. So valve turned the talent into signature salesmen and women. Everyone is in a bad mood. Though luckily a lot of talent talk to Valve and we got this changed and had a base payment no matter how many signatures we sold. but If we sold a lot of signatures we get more than our base salary. If we do not they will give us our base pay. So…. they outsourced all talent costs gg. But to explain. if I’m paid 10k, and I sale 11k signatures for 1 dollar each. I am paid 11k. If the sigs gave us 1 dollar.
If I’m paid 10k and sale signatures for 2k. I am paid 10k. got it? good!
edit: another caster chimed in
posted on reddit too: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/47u067/this_scared_panel_is_boring/d0fw253
It wasn't just 2GD that pushed for salaries every time. I give him full credit for TI2. We wouldn't have been paid if not for him, but him and the valve employee he referred to worked it out with valve and we all got paid, which we definitely deserved. Valve did the right thing there, ultimately. TI4 from my perspective(from what I saw) it was a small group of people that pushed for it, not just James. I just checked the initial contract. There was ALWAYS a base salary at TI4 to be included with the signatures. Right from the start(as of a contract that I received end of June). And that base salary got adjusted and increase by valve multiple times during the event. Regardless of how much you feel they were screwing us over in the contract, Valve did work with 'us(the people arguing for us)' to increase it a few times. They simply wouldn't raise it more if they disagreed completely. There were some faults in the TI4 system and it wasn't perfect but at the end the base salary was extremely respectable, and while low sellers of tickets didn't get extra revenue from signature sales, their base salary was increased by ~80% after the negotiations.
I was open on my twitter to the fact that I was only speaking as English talent see here. Generally contract negotionations differ between regions(for some events, not necessarily valve ones, RU casters might get paid different than English).
Not sure if it's because of salary rates for each country you're from or tax reasons, but i'm only speaking as what I saw as an employee of that event and other talent that were involved in my segment of contract negotiations.
That's not my point. My point was that James framed his argument as:
Initial base pay was 0$+tips, then everyone was upset("Everyone is in a bad mood"), then
"Though luckily a lot of talent talk to Valve and we got this changed and had a base payment no matter how many signatures we sold."
The ONLY way this timeline makes sense(and if he does he's misremembering/misconstruing the 'Everyone is in a bad mood') is if James was asked/involved with talks about pay BEFORE we were ever shown contracts. Considering James was also quite off on the cut of the signatures going to talent, I think it's more likely just an error. That was almost 2 years ago. I had to double check on a LOT of details to remember things.
With that said, the way he wrote it furthers his narrative of 'Valve trying to get as much as they can out of talent' which I think is painting them in an unfair light.
There are many things you can criticize about the way Valve chose to determine pay for TI4, but saying they started at 0$ base and we had to collectively bargain for a higher base(while we were all informed of the situation) is completely wrong(or I and other people I talked to at the time were somehow left out this piece of information, which is fairly unlikely).
latest tweets by Purge
edit2:
Was the lack of pay for casters/hosts known before James' statement? That seems utterly ridiculous.
I knew, and the insiders at ti4 knew, but since it got fixed I don't think people really talked about it.
The most interesting thing I remember a player telling me at ti4 was how Valves Pre event player meeting was talking a bunch about how much money is in dota2. I remember him saying something like it was really different to ti3 where they cared about the players and community and that was the main talking point at the ti3 meeting.
He was pretty concerned with the shift in focus over 12 months. Maybe he was right to be worried. Maybe we just don't know all of the story.
I hope valve learns from this a lot, where dota2 and the events after will be a lot more smoother.
She does cosmetics items.
edit3: Russian caster
edit4: community/stats guy
While I don't agree with the way Valve payed the talent at TI4, it was stated (by several Valve employees I talked to) that one of the reasons (or the biggest reason) for this form of payment was to not get in trouble with American Tax and Immigration authorities.
When the casters come to the US, they don't have a working Visa (so they can't get paid for their work), and the workshop system is/was a way around this (since they are sharing revenue on an item, which is not "working in the usa").
I don't know the exact specifics of the deals, but just wanted to add some extra info.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comm...d_to_pay_talent_through_ingame_images/d0fpxzu