With The International 2022 (TI11) starting tomorrow with the Last Chance Qualifiers, many people are excited to see their favorite teams play alongside its respective broadcast talents. However, it seems that the Russian broadcast team for TI11 may exclude two broadcast talents for its remote broadcasts.
Earlier today, Alexey "nongrata" Vasilyev and Rinat "KingR" Abdullin posted cryptic messages on their own personal Telegram channels. While the messages seemed subtle at first, the messages may have hinted at their exclusion from TI11.
Nongrata and KingR to be possibly removed from the Russian broadcast talent list
As of late, a few talents within the Russian broadcasting team for TI11 have found themselves in hot water as they have made malicious comments about the Ukraine-Russia conflict. One of the talents, Dmitrii “finargot” Pliusnin ended up being removed from the Russian broadcast team after the broadcast studio found his comments regarding the conflict on Twitter.
However as first reported by Escorenews.com, the story does not end there as Alexey "nongrata" Vasilyev and Rinat "KingR" Abdullin are now hinting at their possible exclusion from the event.
The story broke out with nongrata posting a cryptic message on his personal Telegram account, with the quote “No one hits as hard as life.” KingR followed suit with his own cryptic message on his personal Telegram account, saying that “The world is not so sunny and welcoming”.
While the messages seemed subtle at first, many within the Dota 2 Russian community saw the messages as their resignation from TI11’s broadcast talent list as both talents recently found themselves in hot water due to their comments about the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Nongrata was criticized by the community after an old stream clip where he made up the symbol "Z" in the Dota 2 role selection menu, that was made viral by Kyle "Kyle" Freedman. KingR on the other hand was spotted using a pro-Russian nickname on Steam.
However, representatives of the Kazakhstan broadcasting studio FISSURE, the studio that will be covering TI11 in Russian responded to the uproar by saying that nongrata unknowingly drew the letter at the request of his acquaintance and could not understand what was happening.
[Transcriptions via Escorenews.com, Translations via DeepL]
At the time of writing, it is not yet confirmed if both nongrata and KingR are excluded from the broadcast team. But with TI11 beginning soon, will there be more exclusions from the already announced Russian broadcast talent list?
