Pure about Valve: “Dota - yes, it is slowly dying. The trend shows that they are not interested."

Kerry 1win Team Ivan 'Pure' Moskalenko, in an interview with Maria 'Marple' Ermolina, spoke about the departure of his former organization from eSports, spoke about the difficulties in finding a new club, and also recalled his period at Virtus.pro.

We learned after Birmingham that we would not have an organization. Other people in the organization obviously knew about this. But we as a team found out about this quite late. We knew there were some problems. But when we found out that everything was final... we will be sold or we will simply literally sit without a salary and play for our own money. Maybe we will have enough salary to cover the bootcamp from our money that we will have at the bench.

[How did the Tundra management explain this to you? Surely you had some kind of conversation? ] To be honest, there was no conversation with me specifically. The information was conveyed that we no longer have a team, we need to look for a new organization and we have a list of some candidates for the organization, to whom we, accordingly, began to write. The players started writing, our CEO and manager started writing. So we started to find out who was ready to buy us, essentially.

[Has your salary increased by 1win compared to Tundra? ] Good question. Grew up. [Has it increased by multiples or increased slightly? ] No, a little.

[You started looking for someone to sign up with, someone to go to. And for a long time this could not be done. Don't you think this is an alarming bell that money is running out in Dota? ] We all know why sponsors started giving less money. We actually had two months to search. Of course, this is a wake-up call that, in fact, no one wanted to sign the best team of the season for so long.

We had two organizations that were interested and that we could sign up with. And we signed with one of them, accordingly. But it's strange. The team was the best during the season, won the largest number of tournaments, and just won. It makes me think, obviously, that at some point I will have to do something other than play Dota.

[Does it seem to you that all this signals the imminent demise of Dota as a discipline? ] Dota - yes, it is slowly dying. [ Do you believe that Valve will take up their discipline? ] The trend shows that they are not interested. I don't know why. Maybe it’s not profitable for them to invest so much in Dota, given that CS is also a very popular discipline. Maybe they have plans for Deadlock. But they abandoned competitive Dota almost completely. Just like Valve themselves. They don’t spend anything - for several years now they have even been giving away “Int” to PGL.

Considering that there has been no Compendium for so many years, I don't think that... I think that it might appear. But I think this may appear as some kind of last one-time promotion. Valve is still a giant organization. Their first priority is profit. If Dota does not bring them profit, then they will do what brings them more profit. And this, accordingly, is CS.

[You started with Virtus.pro. When you came to Virtus.pro, it was no longer the same organization in which I once worked, it was already completely different. I’m just wondering how the organizations you played for differed from each other]. Considering that this is my first team ever, it was interesting and surprising for me to get to know organizations in Dota in general. I expected more, but, as you said, it was no longer the same organization in which you worked, in which RAMZES666, No[o]ne and other guys played. This was already different.

I think the level of organization has dropped. It was still solid. And as my first organization, it was cool and surprising at some points. But overall I would describe the experience as unfavorable. [What was your first salary at VP? ] From 1,500 to 2,500 - she was definitely somewhere in this range.

Earlier, Anton 'dyrachyo' Shkredov and Alexander 'TORONTOTOKYO' Khertek remembered the old BetBoom Team lineup with Ivan 'Pure' Moskalenko.