In response to Valve working to give tournament organizers some form of control over their match broadcasting rights, ESL has released its first official community stream guidelines for ESL One Germany 2020.
This will provide anyone in the Dota 2 community who wants to re-stream matches a clear list of requirements they must follow to do so under Valve’s recent changes to its policies regarding DotaTV and the streaming rights surrounding competitive events.
ESL has provided a basic list of “community broadcast information” that will apply for the upcoming ESL One Germany qualifiers, which begin on Sept. 25. These guidelines are a test for the eventual final policy set that will be released prior to the main event’s first matches on Oct. 5.
Related: Valve clarifies its plans for competitive Dota 2 after community backlash
Here are all of those guidelines that ESL will require community streamers to follow.
- Community streamers are strictly non-commercial
- Community streams are based exclusively on DotaTV content you have originally created or licensed, as stated by Valve
- Streams must have an additional 10 minutes of delay on top of DotaTV
- There is no signup required for the qualifiers and people can re-stream freely as long as they follow the requirements set above
- These rules only apply for the ESL One Germany qualifiers and there will be a final policy set for the main event, which will be communicated ahead of the league’s start
Basically, you can’t stream the tournament as if you were running it or for external profit, though the usual stream interactions like subscriptions, bits, and donations are fine.
The biggest thing here seems to be the required 10-minute delay for all matches, on top of the DotaTV delay. This means matches will be slightly over 10 minutes behind on any re-stream, though most people watching community streams are there for the streamer’s personality and commentary rather than only the games.
More details about the full community guidelines will be released closer to the main event in October, but you can take a look at OGA Dota PIT Season 3’s documentation if you want an idea of what could be included.
