Valve has taken a stand against Dota 2 teams using the game to advertise their sponsors today, outright banning all sponsor logos during a match such as those seen on team banners, base logos, and player tags.
The move comes just a week before The International begins and is a shock to many organizations who had been using Dota 2‘s in-game elements to advertise their sponsors, with Valve stating the decision was to “remove distracting elements and allow full focus on the game and people playing it” in an Aug. 27 blog post. “Over the years, we’ve built a number of features into Dota to help celebrate these teams and players; unfortunately, we’ve seen those features increasingly being used not to showcase team or player identity, but rather to host advertisements,” the company explained.
