The International 2022 (TI11)’s group stage kicked off yesterday and already concerns about the competitive integrity of the tournament are being brought up. Multiple pro players including Anton "dyrachyo" Shkredov and Zhao "XinQ" Zixing have stated that they could hear the casters while playing the games on the main stage.
While the previous Internationals saw tournament organizers using soundproof booths to counter the issue, TI11 is the first TI that has not used the booths as the tournament's organizers went for an open,double sided rotating booths. Instead, the organizers are using noise canceling headphones to suppress caster and crowd audio. Clearly this has not gone according to plan.
This is quite concerning since this clearly gives an advantage to teams that have players that understand English, who can understand the terms such as “smoke”, “rosh'', and other calls from the English casters.
Multiple personalities complained about caster audio at the main stage
Following the conclusion of Day One of the The International 2022 (TI11) Main Event which saw 4 teams being eliminated from the event, many teams were at a disadvantage after players from different teams brought up a certain issue regarding the commentator’s audio at the arena.
According to Gaimin Gladiator’s Anton "dyrachyo" Shkredov who did a post-match interview with Russian community streamer with Aleksandr "Nix" Levin after his team’s match against Fnatic, his teammates made certain adjustments to the team’s strategy during the match after hearing the commentator’s audio on stage.
“Scary thing is that you hear absolutely everything. Everything that the casters say. You hear every smoke, every rune. Seleri even said: "They have DD [Double Damage Rune], don’t fight" because of the casters.” said dyrachyo.
Following the interview from dyrachyo, multiple Dota 2 personalities gave their own opinions on the matter as they saw it as a disadvantage for non-English speaking teams. PSG.LGD’s Zhao "XinQ" Zixing stated on his Baidu account that he could hear what the casters were saying during his team’s match against Team Secret, however he could not understand them.
Team Aster’s co-founder & Dota 2 legend, Xu "BurNIng" Zhilei said during his latest livestream on the Chinese streaming platform BiliBili that his team had reported the problem regarding the soundproof issue & caster audio issue to tournament organizers PGL. However the team had not received any response from them. He additionally stated that his team were trying to learn some basic keywords related to Dota 2 such as “smoke” or “Roshan” as it could help the team during its matches.
"How to solve this (sound proofing)? Ask casters to shut up or organizers to buy some better sound proofing earphones immediately. As an established esports organization (PGL), it is ridiculous to still have such issues still." said BurNIng during his livestream.
After the issues were brought up by both the players and teams, it looks like tournament organizers PGL has attempted to temporarily resolve the issue by turning down the caster audio at the live event. However, understandably, this solution was met with even more criticism by the spectators as they can barely hear the casters live at the arena.
It is currently unclear if the final two days of the event, to be held in the Singapore Indoor Stadium, will have audio isolation booths.
