Team Spirit’s manager explained who was actually affected by Valve’s controversial decision

Dmitry “Korb3n” Belov stated that Valve’s decision to restrict access to high-ranked replays didn’t actually affect professional players, as many in the Dota 2 community believed, but rather ordinary players who used them to learn.

The Team Spirit manager shared his thoughts during a Twitch stream.

“You have to understand that any new idea or strategy you come up with only really works for one match against a proper opponent. Teams don’t ban specific heroes because they haven’t watched pubs — they just don’t want to. They either believe they can counter it or don’t believe in the hero’s strength. Plus, you can still see what your friends are playing in pubs”

He explained that any so-called “secret” strategies from pros work for just one match, so there’s little point in hiding new tactics. According to Korb3n, the real victims of this restriction are lower-ranked players who learned by watching professional players’ replays.

“It honestly feels like they made things worse for the average guys who play around 3K MMR. Now they can’t watch the replays of their favorite players — the ones they looked up to. They just can’t learn anymore. I think this hurt regular players more than professionals”

The manager emphasized that the biggest impact was on players around the 3000 MMR mark, who used to study pro pubs to improve by copying their strategies and decisions. Now, they’ve lost that opportunity for growth.

Still, it’s worth noting that many professional players had long been asking Valve to limit public access to their pubs. One of the strongest supporters of this idea was the legendary Topson, who repeatedly spoke about the need to shut down third-party services that track pro players’ statistics.