Bizarre situation at the DOTA2 Shanghai Major – Everyone gets fired.

Imagine if during the Masters, Augusta National made CBS fire their main commentator, and then fired all the cameramen and production people. That’s the equivalent of what just happened at the DOTA2 Shanghai Major. Gabe Newell basically pulled a Vince McMahon and fired EVERYBODY.

And to make things even more bizarre, Valve’s Gabe Newell is not pulling ANY punches whatsoever as to the reason that he removed James “2GD” Harding from the broadcast.  In a post on the DOTA 2 forum, Newell made it clear that Harding would never work for the DOTA 2 series ever again. He also announced that the production crew for the $3,000,000 prize pool event had been relieved of their duties.

Two things:

1) James. We’ve had issues with James at previous events. Some Valve people lobbied to bring him back for Shanghai, feeling that he deserved another chance. That was a mistake. James is an ass, and we won’t be working with him again.

2) As long as we’re firing people, we are also firing the production company that we’ve been working with on the Shanghai Major. They will be replaced, and we hope to get this turned around before the main event. — Gabe Newell of Valve/Steam on Reddit

There was no real tipping point visible on the stream, but to use such blunt speak in a business usually more focused on platitudes like “We wish him well on his future endeavors” is.. unusual to say the least. While changing production companies on the fly in the middle of a tournament is.. rather unusual, it’s not completely unexpected, as the Shanghai Major stream has been plagued by issues, freezes and sub-par work. Producing eSports is still in its infant stages, and this kind of thing shows

I’m just waiting for someone to whip up the graphic of Gabe Newell yelling “You’re FIRRRREDDD” ala Vince McMahon.