Workshop Contributors attending The International 2014
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Official Announcement
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Valve is looking for Dota 2 Workshop contributors who are attending the Dota 2 International Championship!
If you are a Dota 2 Workshop contributor attending the International at Key Arena on July 18-21st, and you have shipped items in Dota 2, we would like to offer you a custom Workshop contributor badge to wear at the event.
The Workshop contributor badge will have a piece of custom artwork, your name, and your alias. Please contact us at ti-contributors@valvesoftware.com so we may gather more details from you, and provide you with a template for the badge artwork. This Workshop contributor badge offer is in addition to the current ticket you have purchased, and does not replace it. The deadline to get artwork to us is Monday June 9th, 2014.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the International!
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Just leaving this here too.
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Valve is looking for Dota 2 Workshop contributors who are attending the Dota 2 International Championship!
If you are a Dota 2 Workshop contributor attending the International at Key Arena on July 18-21st, and you have shipped items in Dota 2, we would like to offer you a custom Workshop contributor badge to wear at the event.
The Workshop contributor badge will have a piece of custom artwork, your name, and your alias. Please contact us at ti-contributors@valvesoftware.com so we may gather more details from you, and provide you with a template for the badge artwork. This Workshop contributor badge offer is in addition to the current ticket you have purchased, and does not replace it. The deadline to get artwork to us is Monday June 9th, 2014.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the International!
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Just leaving this here too.
Replies
> Game is hard.
edit: just going to rehash this here -
"Im a Workshop Contributor, will there be a place for me at the International?
This year well be setting aside a larger space for Contributors to meet fans, work together, and show off their creations. If youre interested in participating, well have a signup space for you soon. In the meantime, make sure you purchase your ticket when they go on sale on Friday."
is now
"The badge doesnt give you additional access beyond the ticket you purchased. If you want to share your work with others I would bring your own laptop as the ones at the event are reserved for the invited contributors."
Valve has learned nothing.
What?
Nope. No entry to the building early, no workshop area ( which is understandable because there's only so many computers. Not much to fight about there ), no workshop lounge access, no meeting the players, etc. We still have the ticket we bought to the event and that's it as it seems.
We do get a fancy workshop badge with our name/alias and a set we did though. Purely cosmetic. How ironic.
Why did you say that?! Now it went from 'what!?' to cruel and unusual punishment in my head...
See you there folks'!
Would have been nice for them to let people know that they had changed their minds on how the Workshop was going to work. They've known for a while now.
But you know, Valve doesn't give a shit about their relationship with us.
It's beautiful right? They say they're going to be better, fix 'workshop equality', that they know about special treatment and are trying to fix it.
then they pull this..? It just feels like they aren't giving it any thought whatsoever. It's going to be beautiful.
Welp, maybe just your name, or just your alias(most likely just your name and "Workshop Contributor"). I was talking to Valve earlier and it seems they are still figuring this out as well.
Even being an equal contributor, if you didn't have a special pass, you couldn't meet any of the players, you couldn't sign autographs, you were basically nonexistent. I didn't even have my name on a print of a set that I had worked on.
The issue here is that a small group of contributors get special access to tools and people that are incredibly valuable while the doors are shut on the rest of us.
Valve should be inclusive, not exclusive, especially for the group of people that help sustain their business model. I just don't understand their line of thinking and to be quite honest it's a bit insulting.
Like Bounce is saying. Last year the featured artists got to meet players and stuff. That led to a bunch of them getting deals to do special sets and promotional items. It's real big bonus that Valve is only giving to a select few.
I wonder what the selection process was?
Lets not forget the special geniune items they get this year, sold at the event, that's pretty much free money for them.
and more about this
They're just a bunch of people trying to do a dozen things to make the game and the events and the workshop. They don't necessarily consider the effects any small thing they do has on us and it's hard for them to understand our position.
The people who handled workshop stuff last year might be completely different from the people who are handling it now. They might have just asked the other guys what they did last year and if it worked and got a simple reply. Who knows.
I don't think they're out to intentionally favor certain people or intentionally exclude others. For all we know they could have done a lottery style drawing to select which people got invited. I'm sure they have good reasons for why they've set it up this way. If there's going to be like 30 contributors going, that's a lot to accommodate.
I'm actually pretty dulled to any of this though. I wasn't even expecting to get a custom badge, getting that has increased my excitement, which was pretty low. The only aspect of VIP stuff I am disappointed to miss out on is the after-party, but if like 98% of us are just standard dudes, we can have our own party and fun times. Slum it together.
I will be taking orders for these...
I agree with a lot of this Frump, you are very level headed and I think a lot of this may very well be true.
however, I feel like they should take this more seriously and consider its effects as serious as many of us take our time to create and submit these things. Especially announcing this stuff today, then when trying to ask how the invites work/go, be told that it's already too late to do anything about it.
"They don't necessarily consider the effects any small thing they do has on us and it's hard for them to understand our position."
If they actually communicated with us, they could get a much better idea of our point of view how we feel about stuff like this. I don't know. I'm still going. I would just be lying if said I wasn't supremely let down at how they're handling it. It's not any different from last year, and in some ways, worse.
But I feel like they really need to make a stronger effort to be inclusive to workshoppers who actually help provide items for them to generate revenue from. It takes time and effort to create this stuff (I work full time in the game industry and have a family - as do many others here).
The international will be going on over many days - there is plenty of time to have those who want to contribute, be able to (it's not like there thousands of workshop artists going to this, that I know of).
Going to Ti4 and meeting Valve employees, and players, fans and other workshop artists etc. is a major aspect of helping to promote our items/alias/brand what-have-you.
This is a benefit to Valve just as much as to ourselves (75/25 benefit
The fact is, Valve stated that there would be an area for contributors - and a sign up area/site/sheet etc. Now there is not, unless you were invited (from what I can gather). This change was only communicated recently and being part of the contributor space was a MAJOR factor in my deciding to go.
If there is no chance to be a part of that officially, then I just spent two thousand dollars for the privilege of using vacation time at work, leaving my family for a week, watching the teams play the game and other contributors ... uh, contribute.
I could have done that from home - and I have to say that I'm pissed that I was duped by this part of it. I can honestly say that if I had known that invitee's were the only ones who would be allowed to take advantage of all that Ti4 could offer a workshop artist, I would not be going.
I am appreciative of the items that I've had accepted already, don't get me wrong. And I have a lot more on the way. Just.... giff equality Volvo!
My 2 cents... for what it's worth these days anyway. :P
I've been emailing about the situation this afternoon trying to figure out what the situation is. The information I received was to the contrary of a lot of what has been said in this thread so I wanted to get a clear picture of what is happening.
Initially I was told that badge holders would receive access to the Player's Lounge and the Workshop Suite which is apparently similar to a box that overlooks Key Arena. Non-invited workshop contributors would have to bring their own equipment if they wanted to show anything or work on anything. The extent of the facilities for this part was not quite clear.
Just now I have received an email stating;
So all hope is not lost. I am still pretty disappointed that this happened different than was advertised. Like Prophet9 had I known that that potentially the situation could of been just regular access with a fancy badge I wouldn't have taken time off work and paid for both myself and my partner to come to Seattle. She's not really into watching professional Dota 2 but wanted to support the Workshop art and artists. If the situation had been as detailed above it would of been a large amount of extra costs that I am sure she wouldn't of enjoyed haha.
I don't know much about the genuine items but I don't understand why a similar approach to the New Bloom festival wasn't taken for this. The announcement to Workshop artists with a relatively short deadline produced, in my opinion, some of the best themed artwork Dota 2 has seen to date. If they had done a similar call out to artists for items for the International I am sure they would of had an equally great response.
Cheers!
Communicating back and forth is a lot of work and a lot to manage and the people on the Dota team probably don't consider that they have the skills to do such hands on community management(I wouldn't); plus they have other jobs to do. It would be great if we had just one person to be the go-to Workshop Community person and handling that stuff was a big part of their job. That would probably solve a lot of problems.
Does anyone know if there's a way I could print out the badge myself somehow/somewhere? Can someone show me what their badges from last year looked like?
Hopefully it doesn't matter if I have one or not... still upset though. I had the damn email sitting in draft for 2 days just didn't hit send
i think that is not a big problem, they will not let you out because of that.
and in the worst case you probably can get a vip badge at the event
They are not that evil
Dont believe on all the hate people are spreading =]
i totally understand you by feeling bad for things like that =]
but i trully believe that will not be a problem
Btw, i found an image of last year badge as you requested
I would say so. It seems lots of caster invites are coming out today so i'd imagine Workshop Contributor information will come after that.