Leaderboard

Both Paero and Scoots are pretty spot on. Before you read any further, I just want to make a disclaimer and say that as of writing this post, we only have James "2GD" Harding's perspective on things. Valve have yet to make any official statement (other than Gabe Newell being a fucking retard on reddit), so keep an open mind in the coming days. We don't know it all yet. The reason why this is such a hubbub can be simmered down to the following. The Shanghai Major was produced by a production crew called "KeyTV". They have previously hosted the Nanyang Dota 2 Championship (Which was terrible from the production-side of things, I should know, I watched that garbage) and in general have a reputation for being unreliable. They were hired by Perfect World, who are partnered with Valve and take care of their business in China. KeyTV fucked up majorly once again (See: Nanyang Championship) and production quality was appalling. The broadcast was riddled with issues ranging from missing audio, missing visuals and the stream going offline multiple times. Not to mention that they had seemingly no prepared schedule for the event and the Shanghai Major experienced several HOURS delay every day... HOURS. James "2GD" Harding is an entrepreneur in the video game world. He is not involved solely with Dota 2 (In fact he is currently working on his own game with his own team) and is a former Quake professional. He has also been heavily invested in games such as World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 and Bloodline Champions. (Casting and commentary on WoW and SC2, and actual development on BLC). 2GD is very much part of the "old guard" when it comes to eSports and online broadcasting. He was in the scene before there really was a scene and he had made a name for himself before Valve even considered taking over the DotA IP... Probably. 2GD is known for being brash and unfiltered when it comes to his hosting/casting. He brings the "banter" is probably the best way to put it. He has always been like this, this hasn't changed in the past DECADE. I remember listening to him cast professional Arena games in 2009 and he was as loose back then as he is now. This is his personality in the scene. 2GD has been working with Dota since 2012 with The GD Studio and has hosted several tournaments over the past 4 years. What I am trying to get at here, is that Valve hired 2GD fully knowing what they could expect. He has hosted THE INTERNATIONAL no less than three times in his career and he has hosted multiple home-brewed tournaments on his own. There's no way Valve did not know what they were signing up for. Not to mention that Icefrog himself got in touch with 2GD over Skype and told him, that he was glad to see 2GD hosting the Major and that he should just be himself So when you have a tournament where EVERYTHING is going wrong on the production side such as basic issues being overlooked, serious time-delays and a general lack of competence from a technical standpoint and the only bright light in the event for many viewers is 2GD bringing his special style of hosting to the panel, is it any wonder that people get fucking pissed off when their host is fired IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN BROADCAST? The worst part is that Gabe Newell himself, the fucking Gaben, made a post on the r/Dota2 subreddit calling James an "ass" and publically denouncing him. There was no reasoning explained as to why 2GD was fired, no explanation for why he was "an ass". It was pretty much just a fucking shitpost. What an embarassment.

incan mummy, done with charcoal for college art class

The simple fucking fact is that be it Valve, Riot or even Capcom (at tournaments they run) every fucking company involved with 'E-Sports' (which BEE TEE DUBS is a fucking retarded name) wants to come off as super fucking professional and 'wow so high budget fucking sick production value nice camera angles fam we ESPN now' instead of being what it actually fucking is. A bunch of nerds sitting there discussing a bunch of nerds playing a nerdy fucking video game, and formatting it like its some big boys sports league is stupid as fuck because they're alienating their audience. INC FUN FACT there's very little overlap between people who watch comp dota and fucking NFL or whatever because the audiences are completely different people. But you know what Yames was a guy that made it NOT FEEL like that because he was a fucking funny guy and a good host. It's like watching Mike Ross or Gootecks commentate Street Fighter, they fucjkcing crack jokes about players and shit and it makes it way more fun to watch. Also Gabe's response was fucking shit. You're the face of this fucking massive company and you publicly call someone an ass on le reddit?? No son that makes YOU look like an ass, because if you do that sorta shit you're an ass. There was no fucking reason for him to say that, it added nothing to his post past being a personal attack. You take out that comment the his post has EXACTLY the same effect. I've though more and more over the past few years that Valve are becoming the evil they wanted to stop, but when shit went down it always gave me hope knowing Gabe was in charge. Now I've seen this I'm not even fucking surprised. No, James had a reputation for being an enjoyable host for panels who was popular because he wasn't afraid to make crude jokes and jokes at other people expenses, and that got him in trouble and made for some moments on camera that for the people there, were slightly awkward, but for the people watching were absolutely hilarious. If what he says in his post is true (and I'm sure a lot of it seems less negative because its coming from his point of view) then he's a guy that's helped out the competitive dota scene a hell of a lot more than we know, but also came off as having an attitude to people at Valve. However when he was TOLD to act professionally he did. When he was told to act like himself, he did. This tournament he was told to act like himself and Volvo arbitrarily decided that they didn't like that so he was fired.

Thought u were talking about Tobias for a moment

I'm criminally behind with seasonal stuff other than Osomatsu and Galko but from what i've seen:- Osomatsu - Still great, some skits are hit and miss but they change the formula so much that even if some gags fall flat there's decent follow up Dimension W - Pretty fun so far, reminds me of Gangsta (STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION did the OP for both) though I heard it falls a bit to the fanservice side BokuDake - Really good, not much mystery left in it for me as I spoiled the manga plot points but it looks great, the child abuse themes are hard to stomach though Ajin - Probably the show i've been looking forward to each week, i can look past the CG (which isn't that bad, not KanColle tier at least) since the story is so gripping to me. The IBM's are literally stands though, be that a positive or negative to the show. Dagashi Kashi - Literally a candy commercial with good art, Episode 1 and 2 were okay and a nice distraction to the end of Penguindrum but fuck if this thing didn't get shit quick Sekkou Boys - Short of the Season, it's amazing how funny the slants can make a show featuring 4 busts as the leads Galko - To be honest I can't think of the reason as why i like this but I do, probably the because of all the Waifu potential Other than that some shit i've watched and am watching Kiniro Mosiac - Something I missed as I was not quite full on into anime at that point but thought it might be good to watch and made for a good change of pace for the grittier shows that I've watched just prior mentioned below. I sat through this and liked it a lot but it annoyed me a lot how Aya seemed to get more and more awkward around Yoko in such a small amount of time; Where she starts the show more than capable to speak to her, by the end she can barely manage any words at all without blushing. I don't mind yuri undertones but it was just frustrating that she was so two dimensional. Mononoke - I watched this so that I could justify buying the KOTOBUKIYA Kusuriuri figure and god am I glad I did. I'll include the Bake Neko arc of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales in this since it's brought up in the second act. Try not to be put off by the artstyle as it adds a crazy amount of charm. The thing this show manages to do more than any i've watched is to instill a very chilling setting without that much actual horror Akagi - I tried to watch Akagi about a year ago when I first watched Kaiji looking for something similar but was put off by my complete lack of understanding for Mahjong (which led to me and the two Alex's to try and learn and ultimately inconvenience online mahjong games in the process) but I decided to give it another try telling myself i'd stick with it and that the mahjong wasn't the defining feature and god was I happy that I did. I genuinely enjoyed this more than Kaiji, though they are completely different. Whilst Akagi is the protagonist you are either in the head of his supporting cast (speaking of, the supporting cast of Akagi is A LOT better than Kaiji's, though that's because I like the particular character archetype that Yasuoka has) or the direct opponent which leaves the watcher just as confused as to Akagi's plans as the opposition. The Anime is also a fairly good introduction to the Manga if you want to catch up on the 20+ years of Washizu Mahjong as the series is set up as First Half is Young Akagi/Fake Akagi and the second half is the beginning of Washizu Mahjong which makes it easy to pick up where the anime leaves as it's practically the same game being played Mitsudomoe S1 & S2 - This is another series that i'd love to get a series 3 (or the last bit of S2), The show it'self is very lewd for a a comedy anime revolving around Middle School and the basis for the large majority of the jokes are misunderstandings but I really really warmed up to this after a bit of a iffy reception with some of the Mumble. I feel Mitsudomoe excels at a lot of things that makes it more than the jokes; the choice of VA's are 10/10, every character feels very unique and their own even if they are pretty two dimensional for the sake of the comedy. I wouldn't compare it to Nichibros which was pretty much hysterics all the way through but for something that might fly under the radar when it comes to school comedy i feel it definitely deserves a chance, and if you don't like piss, so be it. Kyou Kara ore wa!! - Something I looked into after regularly browsing the Delinquent Manga threads on /a/ the past couple of months, I wouldn't necessarily call it one of the founding fathers of Delinquent Manga/Anime but it's definitely close, it also represents a genre that's pretty much forgotten in place of moe cute girls doing cute things (which is fine by it's own right). If you like the idea of Delinquent slapstick comedy, this is for you, if not it won't be. Simple as.

So basically Valve does something retarded and when they try to damage control they shot themselves in the foot again due to their amazing PR. Wew, color me surprised

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B061Rs4gw4zkCec35Q5v2r576e_Jd6pJfrT_5_GZ74I/preview Sheds a lot more light on the issue, if you're invested enough to read 17 pages. tl;dr James was hired, and told to 'be himself' by none other than Icefrog. Valve decided they didn't like James' on camera persona, and fired him, there may or may not have been some personal vendetta's/past grudges involved with a Valve employee named Ali. As far as James is aware there was no off camera incident that could have caused him to be fired, most likely it was because he was taking shots at players, (Waga/Singsing for the final session, both of whom James claims to be good friends with). Either way I would argue it's not what he gets for "being a douche" as Valve knew who they were hiring, and what his particular hosting style is, not to mention the extreme unprofessionalism of Valve asking James to hold off on his statement until the morning, while in the meantime Gabe Newell issues his own statement during the period they asked James to cool off for outright calling James "an ass". Coupled with the fact that he was carrying the shit out of the entire panel, and managed to come up with hours of content while dealing with the shitshow that was the production of this event and the endless delays it caused, as well as the fact that he is extremely popular among fans I'd say Valve seriously dropped the ball on this one, and for a company that is notorious for their bad PR it's sure something to fuck up beyond what anyone expected. I'm sure Tobias will probably write up something later that puts my short shitty rundown of events to shame, but I'm about to go out so I've rushed this a bit, and I cba to check over what I've written. tl;dr;tl;dr The only thing Major about this event is how much of a Major fuckup it is.

Apparently it's just because he's an ass. More seriously I read some stuff on /r/OutoftheLoop earlier and it sheds little light on things. Basically, details unknown but this James Harding guy apparently has a reputation for being a douchebag, but he's popular anyway. Coupled with production issues, and probably some specific triggering event, Gaben just said "Screw this guy" and fired him.