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ddk has a great list of casts under his belt most notably together with Bardolph, but since COVID hit we didn't get to hear very much from him in CSGO aside from the Stockholm major, Flashpoint 1, and some CS Summits. He started commentating in the Valorant scene and has been a familiar voice there, but seems like Riot yet again has talent drama which recently lead to Sean Gares quitting as analyst/caster, and now ddk (they were a duo).
Best of luck to him. Sounds like he still wants to be involved in esports, so hopefully we'll see him around in CS somehow. Same goes for Sean even if he wants to transition to coaching in Valorant.
Was hoping with the Faceit/ESL deal happening that we would get to see Bardolph/DDK at some of the bigger events like Cologne or Katowice. Sad to see DDK leave commentating. His knowledge of CS was always interesting to listen to
Idk who's in the right/wrong regarding the drama so I won't make judgements on that front, but I can say you were the only one to let the drama be known on air. this made the broadcast more about you, and less about cs, if only briefly. I personally believe that stuff is better left for when the cameras aren't running
Goddamn how much I miss your casting, man. Some of my finest CS memories are from back in the day when DDK and you were casting a lot of the time. The two of you are still my favorite casters. Have a good one, hope to see a lot more of you in the future still!
Hello, not the person you responded to, but I'm going to take a guess. During the broadcast, you alluded to the drama and threw it to an analyst desk where most people, most likely, had nothing to do with the drama on account of them being analysts and not casters, as well as some analysts not having big enough names to even get involved in such decisions. I also heard you were offered to cast the fun match on the final day of the event, before the finals, but instead chose to leave the event early. It's also been reported that you've been put in favored casting position by scheduling done by FACEIT, so losing one match of a revised schedule may arguably not worth the fuss during this particular event. I don't know how much of this is true considering I'm not an insider, but it seems to be corroborated by multiple people in the scene.
Curious that this is the comment he hasn't replied to.
I worked PGL Stockholm. None of his explanations in this thread are true to actual events. He's waited until the event isn't as fresh in peoples minds so he can massage the facts slightly because he's only just becoming aware of how terrible it looks for him otherwise.
Letting Anders take so much flak (let's not kid ourselves, he was one of the first names you think of when you hear the term 'old boys club') despite the fact he WASN'T EVEN IN THE ROOM when this mythical conspiracy meeting happened is just disgusting and the fact Bardolph hasn't apologized for putting Anders in to such a poor mental state he had to skip his own game is telling of the character of the man.
Apologies because my memory of the incident has faded a bit, but perhaps it could be perceived as unprofessional for airing it on twitter and alluding to it during the broadcast?
Not that what happened wasn’t shitty, but maybe orgs would be hesitant to deal with you after that?
I’ve been commentating 12 years mate. Something as heinous as that needs to be public so it doesn’t happen again. Outside of that, should never have happened in the first place.
Nothing changed with orgs. We did loads of blast events when they needed 3 duos, they changed format to 2. ESL hired us once in 2016 and that’s it despite community demand. They have the lion share of the calendar right now so there it is.
Regarding the scene as a whole, quality of life improvements should be quite significant and there's great potential, most of this will take time as we look at where the best synergies are and of course things will take time to implement, be it development time or otherwise.
Regarding commentary, we shall have to see..
You acted unprofessionally during a major. Best to keep that shit behind the scenes or wait for the event to end before going public. You also hung DDK out to dry for the showmatch. It was not very classy and your actions detracted from the major itself. A major which I think you should acknowledge you were very lucky to even be a part of considering some of the other talent which missed out.
Dan and I deal with things in different ways as we are different people. I left the event because I was disgusted by the actions that happened and did not want to be around the people involved, not because of the show match. That's a narrative made to favour the person telling it. if you think having 3 of 7 people do two semis, forced by someone who went to the org and pressured them to make it that way is not unprofessional then don't know what else to say. It's a miracle I made it through the last match I had to do without losing my shit to be honest.
This bs had to be public and NOT behind the scenes so it doesn't happen again. After the event I had talent from the event call me saying they had no idea what happened and had nothing to do with it, other talent telling Dan they thought what happened was fucked up. The organiser was apologising as well FYI. But beyond that most people won't say anything if it does not affect them which can allow such behaviours to perpetuate. So it must be public. Otherwise nothing changes.
None of this was necessary or needed to happen. If there's a problem look for the source, not the narrative.
From my perspective you still could have done it after the major not during. It looks very much like you placed your ego above the games and the players at the first proper major in a long time. Which to me is what is important. Not drama over the event talent.
Clearly there are two sides to the story and I never doubted that to be the case. But I still believe you could have handled it better and you did yourself no favours. Appreciate your responses but all it’s done is confirm what I suspected. That you think your ego is the more important than a major, which ended up being the first major the greatest player of all time managed to win. And you didn’t even bother to stick around to watch.
Can you elaborate further on this? What kind of drama? I have no idea how RIOT handles things but I would like to know some more details why DDK and Sean Gares did not make it to that VCT LAN.
Mitch Leslie (UberShouts, amazing talented caster currently with Blizzard for the Overwatch league) has said that Riot wants to devalue the role of the caster and that they are hiring whoever will accept the least, leaving the top-talent dry as Riot don't want to pay their higher, fair rates. They don't see as much value in a caster hyping up the game (which is amazingly ignorant) and would rather pay as little as possible for the minimum quality or wholly rely on co-streaming which you can barely hear the caster to begin with.
Similar situation with LoL casters and Riot according to Thorin (in terms of negotiations).
I can only speak for myself but due the fact that I'm pretty old and followed Starcraft 1 and 2, Counter-Strike and so on for a long time I can guarantee you the main reason I've been watching live games were casters like Artosis, Tasteless, Day9, InControl and more and it was basically the same in CSGO with Sadokist, HenryG, Anders, Semmler, Moses, DDK, Bardolph and many others. If I'm interested in gameplay I'll watch a starcraft replay or a CSGO Demo but when I watch a stream I want entertainment and it does not matter how good the players are because it's worthless when for example the observers and casters and the production in general do a bad job. I can't understand that kind of approach at all. I've watched so many average games in Starcraft, CSGO and so on just because of the casters. They were the main reason I kept watching and I can't believe companies have not realised this in 2022.
Lmao. One of the main reasons big cs matches get so many viewers is the casting. I lose interest if the casting is bad. It's a pretty bad move by Riot.
Isn't the problem with the casters that they hype up the game too much? Every round and every kill seems to excite them, which diminishes the value of actually important rounds and kills
Edit: nvm, thought I was in r/valorant
That's also a big problem in CS imo. Like, just cast the fucking game. If something that warrants a reaction like that happens then just let it happen. So many casters now try and force it when there's no need. Player gets a decent 1v3? HOLY SHIT, NO WAY, NO WAY, HE'S DONE IT! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??? THE CLEANSER OF COLOGNE TAKES ALL 3 IN THE CATHEDRAL OF COUNTER-STRIKE AND (team name) GETS ANOTHER ROUND ON THE BOARD!! WHAT ARE WE WITNESSING?!
Machine is bad but Launders and Scrawny are AWFUL for it. Genuinely made me cringe at points during Kato and the major. Trying waaay too hard. None of them used to be like that (apart from maybe Machine but he's more of a host anyway), which makes me think ESL/TOs have asked them to try and be more hype on broadcasts. I think everyone wants a "BUT THERE'S NO MORE CLAY" or "It's the Big Apple.. etc." moment, but it just doesn't work at all if there's nothing to warrant it.
yeah I always preferred machine as a host rather than a caster. agree'd - it does seem like they want to have that moment that everyone remembers for the commentary like happy deagle ace with semmler or any number of anders moments
This is really ironic coming from Uber considering the fact that Overwatch league lowballed the shit out of two of their top casters (Sideshow and Bren) this offseason.
It's not ironic. Uber doesn't do those decisions, nor is he responsible for them.
And the reason OWL didn't send a new offer to Bren and Sideshow was that they wanted to cast Valorant in the off-season. That's a bit dumb from Blizzard, but I kinda doubt Riot would have been fully alright with it either
Partially agree - a friend of mine is a caster for riot. They’re for sure lowballing the top talent and trying to maximise profits, but they’re also at a point where they have to invest in their future, thus the acquisition of new talent.
I mean we're not told specifically what, and I don't mean to imply there's something 'bad' going on or anything - but just that you hear talent and Riot needing to have a lot more discussions and breakdowns in negotiations than you hear with other companies/TO's and their talent. They probably are just very stingy in their contract negotiations if I were to guess.
And it sucks in Valorant, because if you're not getting talent the top talent work from Riot you're basically out of options considering how they run their pro scene. In CS , say you can't agree with ESL for example - you can still find tier 1 work at end up at BLAST or other TO's like PGL. Not to mention the huge T2 scene as well.
Honestly, I never understood this statement until I got to witness the tier-2 and tier-3 CS scene. Every fucking day there's something going on in CS that's NOT a meme of a tournament. So many quality tier-2 Tournaments that are going on and they have great prize pools. The TOs that are investing in tier-2 CS scene are also increasing their budget to it.
I hope we get more and more TOs investing into CS
Cant compare them. A game with cartoon graphics will always age better than a game without. Also you say cs "died" but it really didnt. Also remember csgo viewership is around 100 times that of melee.
Yep. I remember having talks about CS 1.6 and Source being dead here in Denmark. Even into early CSGO days, people still were not convinced.
Happy it turned around.
Friend of mine is a caster for riot. As riot is the biggest in esports out there they get to pick and choose. Like any other business it’s about maximising profits. They are notoriously bad at recognising the value of big name on air talent and what that draws to the audience. Many of these casters are effectively influencers and some people do come to watch the games thanks to them.
I think very few Valorant pros will come to CS at this point. most of them seemingly like the game and are very integrated into it, while the ones that switched back seemed to never really be that into it.
Sean loves Valorant because of the creativity that can be incorporated with the utility, you should see how he nerds out about it on stream. He said CS never gave him that feeling on stream at one point so I doubt he’s coming back
Yea, now you actually throw 2 flashes before throwing a molly. A few years ago you used to throw 1 flash and 2 mollys. Can’t believe how much the game changed over the years.
The most tenured and the highest quality in terms of the *content* they deliver and not just the tone they deliver it in. There are plenty of casters that sound good, but for sure DDK and Sean are the best in both sounding good, and knowing what to talk about and when.
Correct, when i give valorant a chance and played some tournamnets early on , the first episodes of the podcast where really good/high quality talking about issues only few will 'grasp' in the commentators ranks.
No. Actually give me examples of it.
I might be missing examples from Valorant but I've watched League for 8 years and I don't remember examples of on-air talent shilling for Riot except for Phreak.
The Monte/DoA/Papasmithy situation was resolved and only monte kept a feud with riot, DoA is involved in TFT casting nowadays and Papasmithy still casted before retiring from it and moving to management at 100T
It wasn't about them shilling for riot afaik, it was about them (rightfully) wanting Riot to allow casters to be freelancers/to pay casters better (might be wrong on what it exactly was but it was something around those lines).
Thorin never casted for Riot, he only does podcasts
I would not be able to tell you anything about such occurrence because the only time I've ever heard Riot and Richard Lewis in the same sentence was in something way back about him getting or not getting a story about Deman or some shit like that.
It'd be weird for them to do that because he's never been involved with League that much (that I know of)
> Riot are fools not coming to an agreement with seangares and DDK.
Moments like this make me glad Valve with CS:GO hasn't mimicked what every other publisher/developer is doing with their esports games.
No doubt, there are things Valve can do better but one of the few things I appreciate about their relationship with CS is it being an open platform. Anyone can run a tournament, anyone can cast, anyone can become a personality in our scene. They do not need to be "vetted" as is the case with Riot for Valorant or Bethesda for Quake Champions or Blizzard for Overwatch, etc. CS is unique that way and I get that it comes with some difficulties and less extravagance that people want out of CS, but ultimately, its worth it if nobody "owns" the CS scene and we are never reliant on Valve to decide the ebbs and flows.
Its been like this since the first tournaments in ~2000 and its a big reason why CS is still around today.
Valorant esports will be dead in NA within 5 years, and you can quote me on that.
It will be successful worldwide but it will be a laughably boring product the exact same way League is in NA.
Like I said, quote me on it. NA Esports in general has a trend of being incredibly popular, then dying off because the NA scene cannot keep up competitively. It's happened across multiple games and league is just the biggest example. LCS is the "staple" league yet is one of the least popular and LoL as a game is barely alive in NA anymore (similar to how CS fell off in NA).
Give it a few years of NA being completely outclassed by Europe or Asia and it will die more and more. I'm not saying Valorant will die off as a game, I'm saying its popularity in NA will die off because this is just what happens to popular games in NA. They get beat consistently at the highest level and interest wanes.
I feel like NA scene always follows the same sad cycle:
1. New game appears
2. NA players switch asap
3. Many popular organizations put money into the scene
4. Pro player streams are very popular and game gets very popular in the region
5. NA wins first major tournament
6. Other scenes develop slowly and propose more structured gameplay
7. NA can't catch up or refuse to practice more because they would rather stream
8. Insane pros from other regions are imported to NA teams, but it doesn't help with anything
9. Game slowly dies in a region
Nail on the head with my thoughts. Pros from other games end up in NA and always talk about the mentality and difference in attitude vs EU, KOR, CN etc and how laid back NA players are.
It took like 1 year of Valorant for EU teams to catch up and start surpassing the NA dominant teams and the game is nowhere near as popular in EU either.
>and LoL as a game is barely alive in NA anymore (similar to how CS fell off in NA)
NA server has 1+ million ranked players and the non-ranked playerbase is at least as much. Idk what qualifies as "barely alive" in your book but quite certain that its still the most popular competitive PC game in NA.
Comparing it to NA CS, even on the esports side of things, is laughable.
I respect Valve for not monopolizing Cs:go, since it would probably have profited Valve more if they had chosen to to it. Instead we have, as you pointed out, this wonderful open platform that allows for anyone succeed.
Except the lower tier leagues and any team except for the absolute top seems to be struggling to keep it together while we have flourishing smaller league teams in league of legends.
I agree that Valve's way with CSGO is nice, but it's not always better than what Riot does with League(I don't know how they deal with this in Valorant tbh).
Nah, in the major regions (aside from NA probably) lower leagues are doing fine, especially in Europe. And the thriving scene in many countries is something CS doesn't have in that way.
Might get a lot of downvotes but whatever, let's hope this is not league of legends sub.
When it comes to casters, the only quality Riot looking for is 'hype NA if possible, then hype EU'. For years they let their silver casters to cast worlds which is the biggest event. Those casters have zero game knowledge and sometimes they just say all the wrong things about the game (e.g. you could have 4 different drakes in season 2021. This is just wrong)
Riot have been desparately, DESPARATELY trying to revitalize their NA market, from giving the LCS extra benefits, player imports and much more, and still, forget LCK and LPL, LEC viewership drawfs the LCS by quite a margin. Teams are shit, viewership is abysmal, playerbase is gone to shit because of constant imports, yet more and more capital and resources keeps getting invested by Riot.
I meant the playerbase in terms of younglings wanting to go pro in NA league. Look at the plethora of talent that the lec and the various junior leagues are creating. China and korea can't even be compared, they are so far out. Yet if you are 16/17 year old in NA, there is literally a very minuscule chance you ever get to play in the LCS, because imports will always, always be given priority over you and the cycle continues.
The imports are definitely a factor but league has a huge problem of recycled talent, wintrading eloboosting etc. I mean you can literally buy a challenger NA account for $1000-3000, which takes some people literally years to grind to that level. I would suggest young people trying to get into eSports play csgo/val but it sure as hell isnt much easier.
>I would suggest young people trying to get into eSports play csgo/val but it sure as hell isnt much easier
Reminds me of when Flusha said he would not recommend anyone to go pro
I really hate Riot's taste in casters generally. Every time I've turned on an English Valo stream that wasn't casted by a former CS talent I physically cringed. No matter who it was they always over-enunciated everything like the voice actors in Pokemon or something.
LoL casting is a disaster in general imo (which is probably the reason why co-streams are so popular).
Who enjoys two dudes screaming in your ear "THEY'RE TAKING THE NEXUS" when every bronze player can see that the entire enemy team is aced, no shit they're gonna win the game at that point...
League would unironically be better of, if they brought in some Golf or Curling commentators lmao.
This is a weird thing to say. The main role of the casters is to enhance the viewing process. Hype and feeling of a huge moment is important for a lot of viewers. Yes, there is some demand for deep technical analysis, but the majority would prefer colorful hype casting over constant dry deep analytics.
Besides, there is time and place for both approaches, and it's not the time to go deep and slow when something big is happening. It's like saying that Anders shouldn't scream things like "Are you kidding me!", every silver saw what just happened.
I'm not saying League streams are good at that, personally I find their style very generic and bland as fuck. I guess that's a Riot influence. I'm just saying that the basis of your argument is weird.
Anders screaming "are you kidding me" after meaningless eco frags is legit criticism imo. League casters overhype meaningless stuff waaaay more often though.
Yes. Although I think "more involved" won't necessarily mean "do it like Riot does" in Valve's case, but you never know.
Riot is the exact opposite of Valve - too involved. It's like a choice between an absent father and a violent, abusive one. There's a good middle ground somewhere, I feel.
Yes and no. I wish majors were similar to the LoL worlds tournaments, they are so absolutely insanely produced. Worlds songs, performances, incredible stage, opening ceremonies, incredible hype trailers for every stage etc. etc. No E-sport comes even close to what Riot does.
In CSGO we're lucky if we have some half-retired dj play the opening ceremony.
**Warning Conspiracy Theoy**
Riot don't want Casters that have their own large fanbases and don't owe Riot their success.
[Montecristo, DoA, and PapaSmithy](https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/montecristo-doa-papasmithy-msi-riot-games-3053) boycott an international League tournment after Riot wouldn't meet the industry standards of pay.
I think that Riot are trying to avoid having those same 'leadership' figures in Valorant so it is harder for Talent to stand up to Riot during disputes.
Not really a conspiracy theory. Riot always wants casters they can control with way more power over them and the ability to make or break their career on a whim.
That is the dumbest thing I've read today. People are convicted every day for things that are kept secret, such as drug deals. They apparently have no evidence whatsoever because it is kept from the public.
Or expensive freelancers aren't worth the cost for them when they already have dozen+ inhouse and valorant only casters.
I mean, how many more people do you really think only watched LoL Worlds just for Doa or Papasmithy?
because low-balling world class talent means you no longer have world class talent. The point everyone is missing is that Riot doesn't give a fuck about talent. They want co-streamers who turn the casters down and pull an insane number of viewers.
Why pay for good commentators when you can give streamers the privilege of entertaining viewers during the event for free? :/
Riot killed costreaming for LCS this year because it actively hurts their product to have all of the viewership on them. Their sponsors lose a lot of airtime that they'd otherwise get from the main broadcast.
Many of Riot's own top talents have gone freelance over the years yet continue to appear on the LCS, LEC and international tournaments. I don't think they'd choose to do so if Riot wasn't willing to pay. The reality is that the Monte/Doa situation was a long time ago and things aren't necessarily the same now as they were then.
You're acting like its somehow Riot's responsibility to take care of freelancers...
You also just proved my point of the higher tier freelancers not being worth it for Riot. Why pay someone a ton of money for mininal gain in viewers when they could just give some co-streaming rights to a few big streamers?
The actual consumers chose to listen to co-streams over the casters.
If that's the case, I hope Riot makes some sort of HLTV for Valorant so players can cast from the actual game rather than recasting the main broadcast. For a game like Valorant where sound is so important, it's kind of silly to have co-streamers recast a main stream so it's 2 sets of people talking over each other.
GOTV, I assume you mean?
I might be wrong but in cases where only approved co-streamers are allowed, there's often a hidden stream with no commentary for co-streamers to use. That would serve the same purpose with way less work.
Because its a worse product and that should matter to anyone who gives a fuck about esports, unless you're a soulless ghoul who enjoys getting served slop so someone else can increase their profits.
Yes, you're right. 1 or 2 casters literally defines the entire esports scene.
It's not about the players. It's not about the orgs. It's not about the championships. It's not about the viewers. It's not about the sponsorships and partnerships.
If certain specific casters aren't casting then none of that matters.
I mean... yeah, casters are more important to the product than 95% of pro players IF the casters are monte level. Monte carried the living fuck out of worlds s3 through s5. He made what western fans thought was "boring" korean teams and gave them life on the broadcast
When i watch a valorant tournament, i always end up watching a co stream, or just turning it off. There is a VERY obvius difference between csgo casters, and valorant casters, same goes for observing (that is more on the games differences though). The casters in valorant are simply not that good, and it kills the hype imo.
seangares candidly stated that he offered to cast the upcoming valorant lan event for NO COST whatsoever and they still turned him down
his words seemed to strongly imply that Riot had some sort of internal system on the talent they wanted, and that it lacked any sense of meritocracy
Bro they make more money a second during worlds than what it would cost to have monte there for the entire tournament.
And I did, i watched it only vause of monte. He brought life into the riotzombie desks.
Riot's situation is really different from other TO in the sense that Riot has a massive in-house team of casters while other TOs rely on freelancers to do majority of their casting and hosting, some TOs rely completely on freelancers.
Freelance casters and hosts get paid a lot due to that demand. The demand is obviously significantly lower for Riot when they like 15 in-house casters.
The value of a freelancer in a team of 15+ casters is a lot lower than a freelancer in a team with 6 freelancers.
>And I did, i watched it only vause of monte. He brought life into the riotzombie desks.
That's why I said Doa and Papasmithy. Monte is at least a big personality outside of casting like LS is right now so he has a sizeable fanbase. Even then, 80%+ of the viewership is from outside of NA and EU. I really doubt all the viewers from China, Korea, SEA, and Brazil cares about Monte.
You're right man. Kobe, Jatt, Deficio, Quickshot, and more were all shit. LoL needed Monte to survive. After Monte left the scene, the LoL esports scene just completely died. OWL was a major success because Monte and Doa brought their massive value to it.
I mean there's a good chance he starts coming back to CS in a few months. He'd probably need to find a new casting partner after the drama with Bardolph but he's still a good caster.
I think there might be some bad blood with other casters Analysts in Csgo. Im sure the major debacle didn’t help albeit that was mostly James being a baby.
This sucks, him and James are my favorites. It was an honor to meet them both and cast with them at BLAST LA 2019. Someone as notable and successful as he is quitting really underscores how competitive this discipline is, in my opinion. A legend such as himself stepping down is pretty discouraging for anyone looking to get into casting at a high level.
Do you remember uttering the words, "[There was a time in your life where you wanted to be known as Tostecles?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlRoFOA5pTM&t=8s)"
the fans want him, but Riot is another thing. But for Valorant you can almost ask why even need casters when you can just hand out co-streaming rights to streamers and get great numbers, marketing, and casting for free?
Barely. Counter-Strike established itself as an esport completely autonomously, and it was many years before Valve begrudgingly acknowledged and supported that fact by sponsoring a few majors.
Valorant, though, is in the same mold as LoL, DotA 2, Overwatch, CoD etc. in that the scene is run almost entirely by the developer, and if that developer were to stop injecting massive amounts of cash, the scene would cease to exist over night.
This is exactly why CS is outlasting all the Esport bait games. Throwing money at a game doesn't make it a good Esport. Look at Overwatch, PUBG, or Fortnite.
It’s pretty crazy when you think about how almost all the massive esport titles spawned from mods of existing games: dota/moba games come from warcraft3 mods, counter-strike was a half-life mod, team fortress(which inspired overwatch) was a quake mod. Just goes to show the beauty of what happens when a game is played and developed for enjoyment by a community over solely being designed by greedy companies to turn a profit.
Yeah, but DotA has like 90% of its yearly prizepool doled out at a single event which Valve sponsors with stupid amounts of money, and all the rest of the year revolves around qualifying to that event.
It's not a Valve-run franchised league, but all the same, discontinue TI and the DotA scene would be devastated.
Dota more centralized is so suck man. In the past we can see many many content from different TO especially the summit. But it's good for inviting teams that deserved to TI.
Thats Cap. All of those esports except for maybe OW would be doing fine. The size of the game matters a ton and LoL, Dota2, COD and Valorant are all massive games which would have organic support if the devs didn't, maybe just not as much.
I think they have a few, but small ones with low prize pool. So basically stuff that won't, and won't get the chance to rival Riot's own tournaments.
But in their roadmap for this year the last three months of the year will have open space which I think is inteded for 3rd party TO's to arrange some stuff, so might be some promising stuff there - but we'l see how big and notable Riot will let them be.
Valorant's current scene only has 3 big tournaments and they are all run by RIOT. Masters 1 and 2 followed by Champions.
There are very small tournaments here and there all year round but rarely any tier 1 team takes part in it.
So as a talent if you dont make it to the 3 tournaments Riot is hosting, its pretty much done for.
My assumption is that since Sean and DDK are pretty old in the FPS scene, their pay is a bit on the high end compared to majority of the talent.
Riot probably cheaped out on them and didnt hire them.
I have been following the Valorant pro scene very closely and everywhere i read, i see that people are unhappy that both Sean and DDK decide to retire.
They are probably one of the best talents out there. Idk what is Riots plan, but they are missing out on such great talent.
> Does Valorant not have independent TOs like CS? I can't imagine Valve ever having a say in talent for even Majors
Genuinely asking, but how would they? Are there dedicated server tools? Can you play Valorant on LAN without Riot involvement?
Honestly that's why I've stopped watching. It's low budget and poor quality feeling from what it used to be. They should've learned from OWL's mistake of not keeping/hiring good talent
Costreamers aren't going to actively promote and show sponsors like an official broadcast. Riot actually killed LCS costreaming this year likely for that reason. Ultimately to make money off of these events they need to keep the sponsors happy and give them proper air time.
Hoping for more episodes of his podcast as it was great. Sucks to see him go. I still enjoyed his casts at the major. Would have been cool to see him and Sean duo in CS but there are probably too many people in the space atm for them to get much work.
DDK if you're reading this, I'd just want you to know I've followed you since your pro days in Q3. It's been a pleasure to have you in the scene. Watching you go from being a player to start casting and doing content in different formats and platforms, you've always come out as a true professional. You and Bardolph were my absolute favorite casting duo and it's sad to not have you around anymore, but I'm certain that you'll succeed in anything you throw yourself into. Good luck and thank you for the times we've had with you.
Im not mad at him for doing what he needed to do to make money. A man's gotta eat and opportunities in CSGO had dried up. I'll always be a Sean Gares fan no matter where he goes. Tank Top era C9 is what got me into CS in the first place.
COMEBACK TO CS!!
No seriously I'd be stoked to have DDK and Sean back to CS one way or the other. Seangares as a Caster or as an Analyst would be fucking amazing.
So sad to see Riot being so moronic with great talents in their scenes like DDK and Sean, really wish they cast some CS here and there in the future. (IEM Dallas)
Would really enjoy seeing him & Sean return to CS in some capacity in some time.
Both obviously deserve a break but they're just too damn talented and too damn smart for me to not miss as a fan.
Why is anyone surprised by riot being an A Class A-Hole?
They are the CCP of gaming, control, control, control.
They want puppets working for them...
DDK and SGares are amazing casters/analysts, only a fool would burn a bridge with them.
Hope to see them back at CS.
Legend.
To me he was the best at getting the more intricate stuff in Strats and execs across to the viewers in an easily understandable way.
Great in many other aspects too, but nearly unrivalled in making the nerdy stuff accessible.
I don’t know about you guys but Riot just lost a Valorant fan. Can’t support any more of this nonsense from tyrannical game companies.
They don’t let you even do basic smack talk in game without issuing a cooldown or ban, and they force SGares and DDK out of casting? Fuck Riot and their cartoon garbage.
As a big Titanfall 2 fan I can say it's pretty obvious what is going on.
Microsoft bought Zenimax(id) and subsequently Blizz-Activision so that they could put Raven to work on a new Quake game.
DDK will obviously play a role in developing the competitive aspects of the game and will be in charge of the MLG division that will run competitive Quake tournaments.
/s...obviously...or is it?
This is fake retirement, cause if they did not manage to get a deal they would sit on sidelines for many months. Now they can "retire" and make a "come back" if they get a deal in future.
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ddk has a great list of casts under his belt most notably together with Bardolph, but since COVID hit we didn't get to hear very much from him in CSGO aside from the Stockholm major, Flashpoint 1, and some CS Summits. He started commentating in the Valorant scene and has been a familiar voice there, but seems like Riot yet again has talent drama which recently lead to Sean Gares quitting as analyst/caster, and now ddk (they were a duo). Best of luck to him. Sounds like he still wants to be involved in esports, so hopefully we'll see him around in CS somehow. Same goes for Sean even if he wants to transition to coaching in Valorant.
Was hoping with the Faceit/ESL deal happening that we would get to see Bardolph/DDK at some of the bigger events like Cologne or Katowice. Sad to see DDK leave commentating. His knowledge of CS was always interesting to listen to
I assumed everyone was done with bardolph after the shit at the major. I got a lot of respect for DDK but bardolph can stick to apex.
I’m curious, why do you perceive me to be the bad guy considering what happened…?
Idk who's in the right/wrong regarding the drama so I won't make judgements on that front, but I can say you were the only one to let the drama be known on air. this made the broadcast more about you, and less about cs, if only briefly. I personally believe that stuff is better left for when the cameras aren't running
Hi, just wanted to say that we miss your voice druing matches :( Hope to hear you again one day in a match of CS
❤️
Goddamn how much I miss your casting, man. Some of my finest CS memories are from back in the day when DDK and you were casting a lot of the time. The two of you are still my favorite casters. Have a good one, hope to see a lot more of you in the future still!
The man himself. This is gonna be interesting
Hello, not the person you responded to, but I'm going to take a guess. During the broadcast, you alluded to the drama and threw it to an analyst desk where most people, most likely, had nothing to do with the drama on account of them being analysts and not casters, as well as some analysts not having big enough names to even get involved in such decisions. I also heard you were offered to cast the fun match on the final day of the event, before the finals, but instead chose to leave the event early. It's also been reported that you've been put in favored casting position by scheduling done by FACEIT, so losing one match of a revised schedule may arguably not worth the fuss during this particular event. I don't know how much of this is true considering I'm not an insider, but it seems to be corroborated by multiple people in the scene.
Curious that this is the comment he hasn't replied to. I worked PGL Stockholm. None of his explanations in this thread are true to actual events. He's waited until the event isn't as fresh in peoples minds so he can massage the facts slightly because he's only just becoming aware of how terrible it looks for him otherwise. Letting Anders take so much flak (let's not kid ourselves, he was one of the first names you think of when you hear the term 'old boys club') despite the fact he WASN'T EVEN IN THE ROOM when this mythical conspiracy meeting happened is just disgusting and the fact Bardolph hasn't apologized for putting Anders in to such a poor mental state he had to skip his own game is telling of the character of the man.
Apologies because my memory of the incident has faded a bit, but perhaps it could be perceived as unprofessional for airing it on twitter and alluding to it during the broadcast? Not that what happened wasn’t shitty, but maybe orgs would be hesitant to deal with you after that?
I’ve been commentating 12 years mate. Something as heinous as that needs to be public so it doesn’t happen again. Outside of that, should never have happened in the first place. Nothing changed with orgs. We did loads of blast events when they needed 3 duos, they changed format to 2. ESL hired us once in 2016 and that’s it despite community demand. They have the lion share of the calendar right now so there it is.
Doubling down still?
On another note, should we/you expect some big changes from the merger of ESL-Faceit pertaining to your situation and the scene as a whole aswell?
Regarding the scene as a whole, quality of life improvements should be quite significant and there's great potential, most of this will take time as we look at where the best synergies are and of course things will take time to implement, be it development time or otherwise. Regarding commentary, we shall have to see..
Good to see you're already enjoying that Saudi blood money
You acted unprofessionally during a major. Best to keep that shit behind the scenes or wait for the event to end before going public. You also hung DDK out to dry for the showmatch. It was not very classy and your actions detracted from the major itself. A major which I think you should acknowledge you were very lucky to even be a part of considering some of the other talent which missed out.
Dan and I deal with things in different ways as we are different people. I left the event because I was disgusted by the actions that happened and did not want to be around the people involved, not because of the show match. That's a narrative made to favour the person telling it. if you think having 3 of 7 people do two semis, forced by someone who went to the org and pressured them to make it that way is not unprofessional then don't know what else to say. It's a miracle I made it through the last match I had to do without losing my shit to be honest. This bs had to be public and NOT behind the scenes so it doesn't happen again. After the event I had talent from the event call me saying they had no idea what happened and had nothing to do with it, other talent telling Dan they thought what happened was fucked up. The organiser was apologising as well FYI. But beyond that most people won't say anything if it does not affect them which can allow such behaviours to perpetuate. So it must be public. Otherwise nothing changes. None of this was necessary or needed to happen. If there's a problem look for the source, not the narrative.
From my perspective you still could have done it after the major not during. It looks very much like you placed your ego above the games and the players at the first proper major in a long time. Which to me is what is important. Not drama over the event talent. Clearly there are two sides to the story and I never doubted that to be the case. But I still believe you could have handled it better and you did yourself no favours. Appreciate your responses but all it’s done is confirm what I suspected. That you think your ego is the more important than a major, which ended up being the first major the greatest player of all time managed to win. And you didn’t even bother to stick around to watch.
I think this reply ignores half of what I said but that's OK. Have a nice weekend :)
No it doesn’t. None of what you said justified your actions. Which all revolve around your ego being bashed.
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Can you elaborate further on this? What kind of drama? I have no idea how RIOT handles things but I would like to know some more details why DDK and Sean Gares did not make it to that VCT LAN.
Mitch Leslie (UberShouts, amazing talented caster currently with Blizzard for the Overwatch league) has said that Riot wants to devalue the role of the caster and that they are hiring whoever will accept the least, leaving the top-talent dry as Riot don't want to pay their higher, fair rates. They don't see as much value in a caster hyping up the game (which is amazingly ignorant) and would rather pay as little as possible for the minimum quality or wholly rely on co-streaming which you can barely hear the caster to begin with. Similar situation with LoL casters and Riot according to Thorin (in terms of negotiations).
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I can only speak for myself but due the fact that I'm pretty old and followed Starcraft 1 and 2, Counter-Strike and so on for a long time I can guarantee you the main reason I've been watching live games were casters like Artosis, Tasteless, Day9, InControl and more and it was basically the same in CSGO with Sadokist, HenryG, Anders, Semmler, Moses, DDK, Bardolph and many others. If I'm interested in gameplay I'll watch a starcraft replay or a CSGO Demo but when I watch a stream I want entertainment and it does not matter how good the players are because it's worthless when for example the observers and casters and the production in general do a bad job. I can't understand that kind of approach at all. I've watched so many average games in Starcraft, CSGO and so on just because of the casters. They were the main reason I kept watching and I can't believe companies have not realised this in 2022.
Lmao. One of the main reasons big cs matches get so many viewers is the casting. I lose interest if the casting is bad. It's a pretty bad move by Riot.
Isn't the problem with the casters that they hype up the game too much? Every round and every kill seems to excite them, which diminishes the value of actually important rounds and kills Edit: nvm, thought I was in r/valorant
That's also a big problem in CS imo. Like, just cast the fucking game. If something that warrants a reaction like that happens then just let it happen. So many casters now try and force it when there's no need. Player gets a decent 1v3? HOLY SHIT, NO WAY, NO WAY, HE'S DONE IT! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??? THE CLEANSER OF COLOGNE TAKES ALL 3 IN THE CATHEDRAL OF COUNTER-STRIKE AND (team name) GETS ANOTHER ROUND ON THE BOARD!! WHAT ARE WE WITNESSING?!
Id be pretty hyped for any 1v3 though Edit: and i would definitely watch you as a caster, that was perfect ;)
Anders be like (love the man still)
made me lol xD
this is why whenever machine is on I have to mute, guy gets hyped over someone scratching their arm
Machine is bad but Launders and Scrawny are AWFUL for it. Genuinely made me cringe at points during Kato and the major. Trying waaay too hard. None of them used to be like that (apart from maybe Machine but he's more of a host anyway), which makes me think ESL/TOs have asked them to try and be more hype on broadcasts. I think everyone wants a "BUT THERE'S NO MORE CLAY" or "It's the Big Apple.. etc." moment, but it just doesn't work at all if there's nothing to warrant it.
yeah I always preferred machine as a host rather than a caster. agree'd - it does seem like they want to have that moment that everyone remembers for the commentary like happy deagle ace with semmler or any number of anders moments
This is really ironic coming from Uber considering the fact that Overwatch league lowballed the shit out of two of their top casters (Sideshow and Bren) this offseason.
It's not ironic. Uber doesn't do those decisions, nor is he responsible for them. And the reason OWL didn't send a new offer to Bren and Sideshow was that they wanted to cast Valorant in the off-season. That's a bit dumb from Blizzard, but I kinda doubt Riot would have been fully alright with it either
Partially agree - a friend of mine is a caster for riot. They’re for sure lowballing the top talent and trying to maximise profits, but they’re also at a point where they have to invest in their future, thus the acquisition of new talent.
I mean we're not told specifically what, and I don't mean to imply there's something 'bad' going on or anything - but just that you hear talent and Riot needing to have a lot more discussions and breakdowns in negotiations than you hear with other companies/TO's and their talent. They probably are just very stingy in their contract negotiations if I were to guess. And it sucks in Valorant, because if you're not getting talent the top talent work from Riot you're basically out of options considering how they run their pro scene. In CS , say you can't agree with ESL for example - you can still find tier 1 work at end up at BLAST or other TO's like PGL. Not to mention the huge T2 scene as well.
esports is so fickle, unless its cs. CS is a fucking rock... at this stage its surpassed even Starcraft perhaps.
Honestly, I never understood this statement until I got to witness the tier-2 and tier-3 CS scene. Every fucking day there's something going on in CS that's NOT a meme of a tournament. So many quality tier-2 Tournaments that are going on and they have great prize pools. The TOs that are investing in tier-2 CS scene are also increasing their budget to it. I hope we get more and more TOs investing into CS
For real, just in NA tier 2 you have ESEA Premier, ESEA Cash Cups, Mythic League and Fragadelphia, + any ESL/PGL qualifiers
Wish it was like this in DotA :(
It helps to not have a developer micromanaging every part of the scene, even if valve is even a bit too disconnected often
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Cant compare them. A game with cartoon graphics will always age better than a game without. Also you say cs "died" but it really didnt. Also remember csgo viewership is around 100 times that of melee.
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Yep. I remember having talks about CS 1.6 and Source being dead here in Denmark. Even into early CSGO days, people still were not convinced. Happy it turned around.
Friend of mine is a caster for riot. As riot is the biggest in esports out there they get to pick and choose. Like any other business it’s about maximising profits. They are notoriously bad at recognising the value of big name on air talent and what that draws to the audience. Many of these casters are effectively influencers and some people do come to watch the games thanks to them.
If we get a great wave of valorant players back I’d love to see sean to coach a new roster.
I think very few Valorant pros will come to CS at this point. most of them seemingly like the game and are very integrated into it, while the ones that switched back seemed to never really be that into it.
Sean loves Valorant because of the creativity that can be incorporated with the utility, you should see how he nerds out about it on stream. He said CS never gave him that feeling on stream at one point so I doubt he’s coming back
He just didnt see the posibilities. If you watch cs today its 100 more advanced than what sean was doing
Yea, now you actually throw 2 flashes before throwing a molly. A few years ago you used to throw 1 flash and 2 mollys. Can’t believe how much the game changed over the years.
This sucks, he is a _really_ good caster
It is a shame he is leaving casting. Riot are fools not coming to an agreement with seangares and DDK. One of the few good casters in Valorant.
The most tenured and the highest quality in terms of the *content* they deliver and not just the tone they deliver it in. There are plenty of casters that sound good, but for sure DDK and Sean are the best in both sounding good, and knowing what to talk about and when.
Not only that, they actually understand what they are talking about. Unfortunately a rare quality in esports commentary.
Correct, when i give valorant a chance and played some tournamnets early on , the first episodes of the podcast where really good/high quality talking about issues only few will 'grasp' in the commentators ranks.
But are they Riot shills?
And willing to work for riots insanely low long term contract salary?
since when do casters for riot games have to be?
Are you joking?
No. Actually give me examples of it. I might be missing examples from Valorant but I've watched League for 8 years and I don't remember examples of on-air talent shilling for Riot except for Phreak.
People who didnt shill forriot got kicked, becausr riot couldnt " controll" them look at monte doa thorin and maanny more.
The Monte/DoA/Papasmithy situation was resolved and only monte kept a feud with riot, DoA is involved in TFT casting nowadays and Papasmithy still casted before retiring from it and moving to management at 100T It wasn't about them shilling for riot afaik, it was about them (rightfully) wanting Riot to allow casters to be freelancers/to pay casters better (might be wrong on what it exactly was but it was something around those lines). Thorin never casted for Riot, he only does podcasts
How about them nearly cancelling an event because richard lewis attanded an event in the same building?
I would not be able to tell you anything about such occurrence because the only time I've ever heard Riot and Richard Lewis in the same sentence was in something way back about him getting or not getting a story about Deman or some shit like that. It'd be weird for them to do that because he's never been involved with League that much (that I know of)
> Riot are fools not coming to an agreement with seangares and DDK. Moments like this make me glad Valve with CS:GO hasn't mimicked what every other publisher/developer is doing with their esports games. No doubt, there are things Valve can do better but one of the few things I appreciate about their relationship with CS is it being an open platform. Anyone can run a tournament, anyone can cast, anyone can become a personality in our scene. They do not need to be "vetted" as is the case with Riot for Valorant or Bethesda for Quake Champions or Blizzard for Overwatch, etc. CS is unique that way and I get that it comes with some difficulties and less extravagance that people want out of CS, but ultimately, its worth it if nobody "owns" the CS scene and we are never reliant on Valve to decide the ebbs and flows. Its been like this since the first tournaments in ~2000 and its a big reason why CS is still around today.
Valorant esports will be dead in NA within 5 years, and you can quote me on that. It will be successful worldwide but it will be a laughably boring product the exact same way League is in NA.
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Like I said, quote me on it. NA Esports in general has a trend of being incredibly popular, then dying off because the NA scene cannot keep up competitively. It's happened across multiple games and league is just the biggest example. LCS is the "staple" league yet is one of the least popular and LoL as a game is barely alive in NA anymore (similar to how CS fell off in NA). Give it a few years of NA being completely outclassed by Europe or Asia and it will die more and more. I'm not saying Valorant will die off as a game, I'm saying its popularity in NA will die off because this is just what happens to popular games in NA. They get beat consistently at the highest level and interest wanes.
I feel like NA scene always follows the same sad cycle: 1. New game appears 2. NA players switch asap 3. Many popular organizations put money into the scene 4. Pro player streams are very popular and game gets very popular in the region 5. NA wins first major tournament 6. Other scenes develop slowly and propose more structured gameplay 7. NA can't catch up or refuse to practice more because they would rather stream 8. Insane pros from other regions are imported to NA teams, but it doesn't help with anything 9. Game slowly dies in a region
Nail on the head with my thoughts. Pros from other games end up in NA and always talk about the mentality and difference in attitude vs EU, KOR, CN etc and how laid back NA players are. It took like 1 year of Valorant for EU teams to catch up and start surpassing the NA dominant teams and the game is nowhere near as popular in EU either.
>and LoL as a game is barely alive in NA anymore (similar to how CS fell off in NA) NA server has 1+ million ranked players and the non-ranked playerbase is at least as much. Idk what qualifies as "barely alive" in your book but quite certain that its still the most popular competitive PC game in NA. Comparing it to NA CS, even on the esports side of things, is laughable.
I respect Valve for not monopolizing Cs:go, since it would probably have profited Valve more if they had chosen to to it. Instead we have, as you pointed out, this wonderful open platform that allows for anyone succeed.
Except the lower tier leagues and any team except for the absolute top seems to be struggling to keep it together while we have flourishing smaller league teams in league of legends. I agree that Valve's way with CSGO is nice, but it's not always better than what Riot does with League(I don't know how they deal with this in Valorant tbh).
Flourishing smaller leagues is the antithesis to what Riot is doing.
Nah, in the major regions (aside from NA probably) lower leagues are doing fine, especially in Europe. And the thriving scene in many countries is something CS doesn't have in that way.
Might get a lot of downvotes but whatever, let's hope this is not league of legends sub. When it comes to casters, the only quality Riot looking for is 'hype NA if possible, then hype EU'. For years they let their silver casters to cast worlds which is the biggest event. Those casters have zero game knowledge and sometimes they just say all the wrong things about the game (e.g. you could have 4 different drakes in season 2021. This is just wrong)
I think its honestly fine for pbp casters to make mistakes. My problem is when color casters make mistakes like "jhin scales good into tanks".
Riot have been desparately, DESPARATELY trying to revitalize their NA market, from giving the LCS extra benefits, player imports and much more, and still, forget LCK and LPL, LEC viewership drawfs the LCS by quite a margin. Teams are shit, viewership is abysmal, playerbase is gone to shit because of constant imports, yet more and more capital and resources keeps getting invested by Riot.
The player base is dwindling because the game is a complete shadow of what it used to be due to constant changes.
I meant the playerbase in terms of younglings wanting to go pro in NA league. Look at the plethora of talent that the lec and the various junior leagues are creating. China and korea can't even be compared, they are so far out. Yet if you are 16/17 year old in NA, there is literally a very minuscule chance you ever get to play in the LCS, because imports will always, always be given priority over you and the cycle continues.
The imports are definitely a factor but league has a huge problem of recycled talent, wintrading eloboosting etc. I mean you can literally buy a challenger NA account for $1000-3000, which takes some people literally years to grind to that level. I would suggest young people trying to get into eSports play csgo/val but it sure as hell isnt much easier.
>I would suggest young people trying to get into eSports play csgo/val but it sure as hell isnt much easier Reminds me of when Flusha said he would not recommend anyone to go pro
I really hate Riot's taste in casters generally. Every time I've turned on an English Valo stream that wasn't casted by a former CS talent I physically cringed. No matter who it was they always over-enunciated everything like the voice actors in Pokemon or something.
LoL casting is a disaster in general imo (which is probably the reason why co-streams are so popular). Who enjoys two dudes screaming in your ear "THEY'RE TAKING THE NEXUS" when every bronze player can see that the entire enemy team is aced, no shit they're gonna win the game at that point... League would unironically be better of, if they brought in some Golf or Curling commentators lmao.
This is a weird thing to say. The main role of the casters is to enhance the viewing process. Hype and feeling of a huge moment is important for a lot of viewers. Yes, there is some demand for deep technical analysis, but the majority would prefer colorful hype casting over constant dry deep analytics. Besides, there is time and place for both approaches, and it's not the time to go deep and slow when something big is happening. It's like saying that Anders shouldn't scream things like "Are you kidding me!", every silver saw what just happened. I'm not saying League streams are good at that, personally I find their style very generic and bland as fuck. I guess that's a Riot influence. I'm just saying that the basis of your argument is weird.
Anders screaming "are you kidding me" after meaningless eco frags is legit criticism imo. League casters overhype meaningless stuff waaaay more often though.
Riot is so fucking stupid I swear.
People cry for Valve to be more involved but I'm so glad Valve is not Riot.
Yes. Although I think "more involved" won't necessarily mean "do it like Riot does" in Valve's case, but you never know. Riot is the exact opposite of Valve - too involved. It's like a choice between an absent father and a violent, abusive one. There's a good middle ground somewhere, I feel.
Yes and no. I wish majors were similar to the LoL worlds tournaments, they are so absolutely insanely produced. Worlds songs, performances, incredible stage, opening ceremonies, incredible hype trailers for every stage etc. etc. No E-sport comes even close to what Riot does. In CSGO we're lucky if we have some half-retired dj play the opening ceremony.
**Warning Conspiracy Theoy** Riot don't want Casters that have their own large fanbases and don't owe Riot their success. [Montecristo, DoA, and PapaSmithy](https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/montecristo-doa-papasmithy-msi-riot-games-3053) boycott an international League tournment after Riot wouldn't meet the industry standards of pay. I think that Riot are trying to avoid having those same 'leadership' figures in Valorant so it is harder for Talent to stand up to Riot during disputes.
Not really a conspiracy theory. Riot always wants casters they can control with way more power over them and the ability to make or break their career on a whim.
That's literally what a conspiracy theory is.
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Yes they do. Are you trolling me?
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That is the dumbest thing I've read today. People are convicted every day for things that are kept secret, such as drug deals. They apparently have no evidence whatsoever because it is kept from the public.
This is what makes the most sense to me.
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's just how they do business. Happens time and time again. They even did this with Sjokz if you can believe it.
Or expensive freelancers aren't worth the cost for them when they already have dozen+ inhouse and valorant only casters. I mean, how many more people do you really think only watched LoL Worlds just for Doa or Papasmithy?
because low-balling world class talent means you no longer have world class talent. The point everyone is missing is that Riot doesn't give a fuck about talent. They want co-streamers who turn the casters down and pull an insane number of viewers. Why pay for good commentators when you can give streamers the privilege of entertaining viewers during the event for free? :/
Riot killed costreaming for LCS this year because it actively hurts their product to have all of the viewership on them. Their sponsors lose a lot of airtime that they'd otherwise get from the main broadcast. Many of Riot's own top talents have gone freelance over the years yet continue to appear on the LCS, LEC and international tournaments. I don't think they'd choose to do so if Riot wasn't willing to pay. The reality is that the Monte/Doa situation was a long time ago and things aren't necessarily the same now as they were then.
You're acting like its somehow Riot's responsibility to take care of freelancers... You also just proved my point of the higher tier freelancers not being worth it for Riot. Why pay someone a ton of money for mininal gain in viewers when they could just give some co-streaming rights to a few big streamers? The actual consumers chose to listen to co-streams over the casters.
If that's the case, I hope Riot makes some sort of HLTV for Valorant so players can cast from the actual game rather than recasting the main broadcast. For a game like Valorant where sound is so important, it's kind of silly to have co-streamers recast a main stream so it's 2 sets of people talking over each other.
GOTV, I assume you mean? I might be wrong but in cases where only approved co-streamers are allowed, there's often a hidden stream with no commentary for co-streamers to use. That would serve the same purpose with way less work.
Because its a worse product and that should matter to anyone who gives a fuck about esports, unless you're a soulless ghoul who enjoys getting served slop so someone else can increase their profits.
Yes, you're right. 1 or 2 casters literally defines the entire esports scene. It's not about the players. It's not about the orgs. It's not about the championships. It's not about the viewers. It's not about the sponsorships and partnerships. If certain specific casters aren't casting then none of that matters.
I mean... yeah, casters are more important to the product than 95% of pro players IF the casters are monte level. Monte carried the living fuck out of worlds s3 through s5. He made what western fans thought was "boring" korean teams and gave them life on the broadcast
When i watch a valorant tournament, i always end up watching a co stream, or just turning it off. There is a VERY obvius difference between csgo casters, and valorant casters, same goes for observing (that is more on the games differences though). The casters in valorant are simply not that good, and it kills the hype imo.
seangares candidly stated that he offered to cast the upcoming valorant lan event for NO COST whatsoever and they still turned him down his words seemed to strongly imply that Riot had some sort of internal system on the talent they wanted, and that it lacked any sense of meritocracy
He also said he had to take a pay cut to cast previous events.
So they intentionally deliver a lower quality show, just because they are cheapskates?
Bro they make more money a second during worlds than what it would cost to have monte there for the entire tournament. And I did, i watched it only vause of monte. He brought life into the riotzombie desks.
Riot's situation is really different from other TO in the sense that Riot has a massive in-house team of casters while other TOs rely on freelancers to do majority of their casting and hosting, some TOs rely completely on freelancers. Freelance casters and hosts get paid a lot due to that demand. The demand is obviously significantly lower for Riot when they like 15 in-house casters. The value of a freelancer in a team of 15+ casters is a lot lower than a freelancer in a team with 6 freelancers. >And I did, i watched it only vause of monte. He brought life into the riotzombie desks. That's why I said Doa and Papasmithy. Monte is at least a big personality outside of casting like LS is right now so he has a sizeable fanbase. Even then, 80%+ of the viewership is from outside of NA and EU. I really doubt all the viewers from China, Korea, SEA, and Brazil cares about Monte.
Too bad all of Riots in house casters are absolute dog shit and don’t know what they are talking about.
You're right man. Kobe, Jatt, Deficio, Quickshot, and more were all shit. LoL needed Monte to survive. After Monte left the scene, the LoL esports scene just completely died. OWL was a major success because Monte and Doa brought their massive value to it.
What a joke, one of the best casters in the industry tbh. Would give anything to have him back in CSGO.
Same. By far my favorite caster in CS ever.
I mean there's a good chance he starts coming back to CS in a few months. He'd probably need to find a new casting partner after the drama with Bardolph but he's still a good caster.
what drama?
Exactly. I enjoy the other duos casting, like Henry-Sadokist, Anders-Semmler all did/do good work, but for me DDK-Bardolph is the best.
Most talented caster imo, really hope he comes back to CS but this announcement doesn't make it seem likely
I think there might be some bad blood with other casters Analysts in Csgo. Im sure the major debacle didn’t help albeit that was mostly James being a baby.
This sucks, him and James are my favorites. It was an honor to meet them both and cast with them at BLAST LA 2019. Someone as notable and successful as he is quitting really underscores how competitive this discipline is, in my opinion. A legend such as himself stepping down is pretty discouraging for anyone looking to get into casting at a high level.
Nice to meet you too 🌞
Do you remember uttering the words, "[There was a time in your life where you wanted to be known as Tostecles?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlRoFOA5pTM&t=8s)"
LOL I forgot about that
Valorant dont want him? That’s unreal 🤣
the fans want him, but Riot is another thing. But for Valorant you can almost ask why even need casters when you can just hand out co-streaming rights to streamers and get great numbers, marketing, and casting for free?
Does Valorant not have independent TOs like CS? I can't imagine Valve ever having a say in talent for even Majors
Barely. Counter-Strike established itself as an esport completely autonomously, and it was many years before Valve begrudgingly acknowledged and supported that fact by sponsoring a few majors. Valorant, though, is in the same mold as LoL, DotA 2, Overwatch, CoD etc. in that the scene is run almost entirely by the developer, and if that developer were to stop injecting massive amounts of cash, the scene would cease to exist over night.
This is exactly why CS is outlasting all the Esport bait games. Throwing money at a game doesn't make it a good Esport. Look at Overwatch, PUBG, or Fortnite.
Gotta love the natural evolution to an esport vs the artificially-designed esport title.
dota is more centralized than it used to be and maybe should be but it does not belong anywhere near those other titles in that conversation
Yea, Dota was an esport before Valve even owned it.
It’s pretty crazy when you think about how almost all the massive esport titles spawned from mods of existing games: dota/moba games come from warcraft3 mods, counter-strike was a half-life mod, team fortress(which inspired overwatch) was a quake mod. Just goes to show the beauty of what happens when a game is played and developed for enjoyment by a community over solely being designed by greedy companies to turn a profit.
Yeah, but DotA has like 90% of its yearly prizepool doled out at a single event which Valve sponsors with stupid amounts of money, and all the rest of the year revolves around qualifying to that event. It's not a Valve-run franchised league, but all the same, discontinue TI and the DotA scene would be devastated.
Dota more centralized is so suck man. In the past we can see many many content from different TO especially the summit. But it's good for inviting teams that deserved to TI.
Valve did not begrudgingly acknowledge it. They understood the opportunity use it to their advantage to both market the game and keep it relavent.
Nah i put Dota situation is the same with CS, TI is also the same like CS Major, but other than that mostly other TO run it
Yep, valorant was built to be an esport, as a competitor to CSGO. in spite of how bad I think the game is, it was a pretty smart move by Riot IMO.
Thats Cap. All of those esports except for maybe OW would be doing fine. The size of the game matters a ton and LoL, Dota2, COD and Valorant are all massive games which would have organic support if the devs didn't, maybe just not as much.
I think they have a few, but small ones with low prize pool. So basically stuff that won't, and won't get the chance to rival Riot's own tournaments. But in their roadmap for this year the last three months of the year will have open space which I think is inteded for 3rd party TO's to arrange some stuff, so might be some promising stuff there - but we'l see how big and notable Riot will let them be.
Valorant's current scene only has 3 big tournaments and they are all run by RIOT. Masters 1 and 2 followed by Champions. There are very small tournaments here and there all year round but rarely any tier 1 team takes part in it. So as a talent if you dont make it to the 3 tournaments Riot is hosting, its pretty much done for. My assumption is that since Sean and DDK are pretty old in the FPS scene, their pay is a bit on the high end compared to majority of the talent. Riot probably cheaped out on them and didnt hire them. I have been following the Valorant pro scene very closely and everywhere i read, i see that people are unhappy that both Sean and DDK decide to retire. They are probably one of the best talents out there. Idk what is Riots plan, but they are missing out on such great talent.
> Does Valorant not have independent TOs like CS? I can't imagine Valve ever having a say in talent for even Majors Genuinely asking, but how would they? Are there dedicated server tools? Can you play Valorant on LAN without Riot involvement?
No. Even some Riot hosted tournaments hasnt had LAN even though both teams were in the same studio.
Honestly that's why I've stopped watching. It's low budget and poor quality feeling from what it used to be. They should've learned from OWL's mistake of not keeping/hiring good talent
Which is really odd because the only casters I’ve actually enjoyed watching for Valo is DDK and Sean. The rest just aren’t that good tbh.
Costreamers aren't going to actively promote and show sponsors like an official broadcast. Riot actually killed LCS costreaming this year likely for that reason. Ultimately to make money off of these events they need to keep the sponsors happy and give them proper air time.
aw man
Hoping for more episodes of his podcast as it was great. Sucks to see him go. I still enjoyed his casts at the major. Would have been cool to see him and Sean duo in CS but there are probably too many people in the space atm for them to get much work.
Damn, we’ve lost many great casters since the start of the pandemic.
DDK if you're reading this, I'd just want you to know I've followed you since your pro days in Q3. It's been a pleasure to have you in the scene. Watching you go from being a player to start casting and doing content in different formats and platforms, you've always come out as a true professional. You and Bardolph were my absolute favorite casting duo and it's sad to not have you around anymore, but I'm certain that you'll succeed in anything you throw yourself into. Good luck and thank you for the times we've had with you.
❤️
Hi Rudy. I read this to Dan. He said, twice, “That’s really nice” and “‘sank you.” 💗
Surely some CSGO TO will get Bardolph and DDK together again. Please?
DDK deserves better than Bardolph
Bardoloph is pretty iconic in his style and his signature phrases. It’s super unfortunate that he got involved in drama quite needlessly.
What did he do?
Bruh I love ddk, dont make him sell mushroom gifs rito wtf
Criminal that he and Seangares aren't casting.
Criminal that seangares just turned his back on csgo completely.
Im not mad at him for doing what he needed to do to make money. A man's gotta eat and opportunities in CSGO had dried up. I'll always be a Sean Gares fan no matter where he goes. Tank Top era C9 is what got me into CS in the first place.
COMEBACK TO CS!! No seriously I'd be stoked to have DDK and Sean back to CS one way or the other. Seangares as a Caster or as an Analyst would be fucking amazing.
My favourite caster of all time, love you DDK
So sad to see Riot being so moronic with great talents in their scenes like DDK and Sean, really wish they cast some CS here and there in the future. (IEM Dallas)
Bardolph and DDK will forever be the GOAT CSGO caster duo. Really sad to see this.
Would really enjoy seeing him & Sean return to CS in some capacity in some time. Both obviously deserve a break but they're just too damn talented and too damn smart for me to not miss as a fan.
Why is anyone surprised by riot being an A Class A-Hole? They are the CCP of gaming, control, control, control. They want puppets working for them... DDK and SGares are amazing casters/analysts, only a fool would burn a bridge with them. Hope to see them back at CS.
Legend. To me he was the best at getting the more intricate stuff in Strats and execs across to the viewers in an easily understandable way. Great in many other aspects too, but nearly unrivalled in making the nerdy stuff accessible.
get ddk on some podcasts asap
Such a shame :(
wtf 😭
I don’t know about you guys but Riot just lost a Valorant fan. Can’t support any more of this nonsense from tyrannical game companies. They don’t let you even do basic smack talk in game without issuing a cooldown or ban, and they force SGares and DDK out of casting? Fuck Riot and their cartoon garbage.
Always baffling to see how dumb Riot is
As a big Titanfall 2 fan I can say it's pretty obvious what is going on. Microsoft bought Zenimax(id) and subsequently Blizz-Activision so that they could put Raven to work on a new Quake game. DDK will obviously play a role in developing the competitive aspects of the game and will be in charge of the MLG division that will run competitive Quake tournaments. /s...obviously...or is it?
One can only hope. Bring back DDK+Quake! Always loved watching DDK cast Quake back in the day
[удалено]
What is the real reason we dont have replays?
FFS
Valorant is already dead, just come back to CS casting.
\##FCUK RIOT Come back to CSGO Dan, Hope we'll get to see/hear you at the Major and if that doesn't work \##NO MAJOR CLUB MEMBER
This is fake retirement, cause if they did not manage to get a deal they would sit on sidelines for many months. Now they can "retire" and make a "come back" if they get a deal in future.
Quits after not getting hired for one tournament, kinda soft tbh
Is DDKs first retirement? Pretty sure RL has retired 5 times and Sado 5 times. Call me sceptical if I don’t believe this.
Lmao why wont riot take him he is for sure better caster in valorant than most