Olivia R. August 16, 2019
The International 2019 started off with a handful of technical issues that impacted spectators' viewing experience.
With a total of five different streams taking place simultaneously, fans began to notice that some of the streams didn't have visible gamertags. This was first discovered when TNC Predator and Keen Gaming played out their entire series without their names being displayed.
Fans thought the teams were joking around at first but it became apparent as the day went on that the issue was not limited to TNC and Keen. That's when fans took to Reddit to ask Valve to step in and fix the issue.
A discussion soon started over who was really at fault here, with many pointing to the tournament's production staff.
One user noted that there's an option of including what's known as the player's "persona name" when parsing a match within the Dota 2 API. For pros, this often means showing their Steam nickname instead. They added that they weren't sure how this would work "on the game side of things."
Others responded it was simply the stream "fucking up," and that it needed to be fixed immediately.
The issue, it turned out, was an error with the Dota 2 client lobby being used for the fifth channel. It continued for the following match, which saw Natus Vincere take on OG. Once again, it was hard to keep track of what either team was doing.
The International 2018 saw over 4 million viewers as the average CCV. Though TI stands as one of the largest esports tournaments of the year, it seems no amount of preparation is enough to prevent technical difficulties in the early days of an event. Other issues included an entire PC being replaced during a match between Ninjas in Pyjamas and Virtus Pro.