Surprisingly, what killed the company was the lack of competitive scene. We sort of expected players to organize themselves. We also had a lot of the DotA pros

Surprisingly, what killed the company was the lack of competitive scene. We sort of expected players to organize themselves. We also had a lot of the DotA pros at the time. The moment icefrog and valve dropped their $1M tournament prize pool, the company in hindsight was doomed. But it took a couple years to sink. Players follow pros, and if the pros are playing DotA, they’ll switch to DotA. Our only chance was to keep the pros. It would have been smart to make an exclusive contact with as many pros as possible. But of course, that’s with hindsight. The rise of twitch happened to coincide with the rise of pro DotA, which I think was a factor in shifting popularity.