Buying voice lines and stickers have never been more accessible thanks to Valve’s new update.
On 29th September, Valve released Last Chance Qualifier Team and Broadcaster Talent Stickers and Talent Voice Lines for The International 11, exclusively for Battle Pass owners. Many people have complained about the gacha system of Talent Stickers. In response to those complaints, Valve has made Talent Voice Lines purchasable separately from the Talent Stickers.
TI11 has created massive hype in the Dota 2 community, and as usual, the Talent Voice Lines returned to long-waiting fans as a part of the Talent Stickers on 29 September. The downside was that fans couldn’t buy Talent Voice Lines without the Stickers and only Gold or Holo Stickers — both extremely difficult to obtain — had Voice Lines.
Copyright: Valve
These Stickers are top-tier items in the gacha draw and players had only a 3.85% chance of getting any. As a result, most BP owners were unhappy with their purchase and made numerous complaints. This resulted in Valve making the Talent Voice Lines separately purchasable from the Talent Stickers, issuing the changes in an update on 1 October, less than two days after the initial release. Players can purchase a specific talent’s voice lines directly, and half the revenue from those sales will go to the Broadcaster.
The broadcast talent list for TI11 was recently published on Twitter, and Valve also announced that they would be providing sticker capsules for both Talents and the eighteen qualified teams from who will enter the Group Stage of TI11. Many pro players are notoriously fond of spamming voice lines in matches, and sound bites from specific broadcasters are in high demand among them.
However, the previously released purchase system made it very expensive to obtain their favorite broadcasters’ Voice Lines. Players had only a 1 in 1196 chance of getting a specific Talent Voice Line according to the caster, producer, and talent Kyle Freedman.
Valve released the TI talent voicelines today.
In order to get them, you must buy the Sticker Capsule.
Only Gold and Holo stickers grant voicelines (3.85% chance/46 talent). So, if you love a specific person’s line, your odds of getting theirs are .08246%.
A 1 in 1196 chance
— Kyle #StandWithUkraine (@keepingitKyle) September 29, 2022
Due to this loot box system, players had no way of supporting individual broadcasters, and though second-hand Voice Line Purchase was available, the money would only go to Valve and not the broadcasters. Second-hand sticker sellers were charging ridiculously high prices for Gold and Holo Stickers, which were unaffordable for most players. This ordeal created a storm in the community as players and talents were all upset and kept complaining to Valve about this unreasonable method of acquiring stickers and voice lines.
Valve immediately acknowledged the issue and announced on October 1 that they would make the Talent Voice Lines purchasable separately and that half the revenue from these voice lines will go directly to the talent so that players can support their desired talents. The game development giant also issued a new update to fix the loot box style sticker purchasing issue.
Valve’s statement on this issue was posted on their blog. “Yesterday we shipped an update which added a capsule containing Talent Stickers that unlocked talent voice lines,” it read, “Upon doing so, fans and talent alike reached out expressing unhappiness with the product.”
The statement continued, “Our intention was to create a compelling system that allowed fans to connect with their favorite talent in a different way than in previous years, and we fell short of that goal. We are sorry for that and we intend to correct it.”
This is just another in a series of issues that have seen Valve in hot water recently. A few weeks ago, the company announced a free Dota Plus week for players as compensation for their service outage, and they also reformatted Battle Points because of complaints from players about not being able to make much progress with them.
Shout-out to Valve for listening and reacting quickly to feedback https://t.co/1k9ferLb52
— Cap (@CapCasts) October 1, 2022
This trend of taking player feedback into account seriously has been a positive change for the organization, which have had a checkered history as far as listening to its own user base is concerned. Many community members, including popular caster Austin “Cap” Walsh, made Tweets echoing this sentiment.