Excitement quickly turned to disappointment as the focus moved from the gameplay for the first Major of the season to the production value.
South America was hyped to showcase its rising region and talent at the first-ever SA Dota 2 Major. They even created an anthem to highlight what it means to players and fans to compete at this level in South America.
All things considered, this event was to be a celebration and opportunity to show the world the rise of Dota 2 in the region.
But instead, the hype was overshadowed by the disastrous start from a production value standpoint.
Dubbed "LMAO Major" by users on Reddit, the entire platform became filled with complaints, criticism, and memes.
While it sounded like a noisy set or noisy production that they were postprocessing to do silence removal and the lighting and camera felt a bit outdated, the biggest issue was the stream(s) itself.
More than a half an hour late with three of the four matches, EN 2 and 4 were offline, EN 3 had no Audio and EN 1 had a waiting screen — but the hub stream has shown all 4 games to be live, or at the very least 3.
When they did get things coordinated and going, Talon vs Gaimin Gladiators had no caster audio, and Evil Geniuses vs LGD was not a full screen and was shown with an eye-damaging neon green geometry display screen.
Many, even from Peru, kept saying that the country simply didn't have the internet infrastructure for an event of this scale. Point Proven. Even the 4D esports streams didn't all work.
All in all, it is still better than TI though, at least the panel is on-site. The visuals have been amazing and comic book-style drafts have been fun.
The first round of matches was a disaster stream-wise, but maybe they will improve on that. It was just the first day after all and if Major history shows us anything, it is that things almost never seem to have smooth starts.
The action resumes today at 16:00 CET with four two-game series in the group stage.
Evil Geniuses
TSM
PSG.LGD
Gaimin GladiatorsLima Major format
The teams are divided into two groups. The top six teams from each group will make the cut to the playoffs, while the bottom three teams will be eliminated.
Group Stage: February 22 - February 26, 2023
- Two groups of nine teams each
- Single round-robin
- All matches are Bo2
- Top four teams from each group advance to the upper bracket of the playoffs
- 5th and 6th place teams from each group advance to the lower bracket of the playoffs
- Remaining teams are eliminated
Playoffs - February 28 - March 5, 2023
- Double-elimination bracket
- All matches except Grand Final are Bo3
- Grand Final is Bo5
Lima Major 2023 Broadcasts
The event will be officially streamed in five different languages — ENGLISH, Chinese, RUSSIAN, SPANISH, and Portuguese —if they work and you can find them.
