Valve straight-up refusing to hire people that are responsible for something that has nothing to do with development. In this case, people who actually take care of the Esports Scene of the game. I mean Valve did not even want to hire Slacks as Community Manager. And i don’t remember who it was, but someone said in the past that even Tier 1 Teams often struggle getting in touch with anyone at Valve if something important comes up.

Whenever Valve cancels something, be it the Battle Pass, the DPC or whatever it also usually comes down to them not having people to take care of it and Valve sadly does not hire people for specific jobs. Like if the UI Designer for Dota leaves, Valve won’t start looking for a new one. If the guy that took care of DPC besides doing some programming work leaves and nobody replaces him, then the DPC simply dies (doesn’t have to be the reason why it got canceled but just as an example).

If Valve had an Esports Department, things would have been less messy and more structured in the past 10 years for sure. Someone with more than 3 brain cells would probably have said “Lets do not use those 40 Million the community gathered for TI alone, but for the whole season, including Tier 2 Dota so upcoming talents can make a living too”. Sadly this is never gonna happen. The past has shown a few times that Valve rather let their games die than trying to find people to work on them. Its honestly a miracle that we made it this far with Dota.