As many of you will have known already, on Tuesday, the Meet Your Makers organisation published an article (which you can read here) in which critical allegations were levelled at the Star Ladder TV organisation, pertaining to their recent Star Series Season III LAN grand finals event at the Kiev CyberSport Arena between the 18th and 21st of October.
The article called into question the hospitality and business practices of SLTV and sought to damage their reputation. In doing so, MYM named or referenced several other parties who were present in Kiev - including us at joinDOTA - without contacting them and receiving their permission, perspective, confirmation or denial on the matters, or by distorting their involvement or words to paint SLTV in a negative light. By extension, the reputation of joinDOTA and the other parties concerned was also called into question.
In response to the allegations concerning us, joinDOTA's Project Leader,
Moritz 'Moose' Zimmermann, has prepared a statement which clarifies our position on the matter:
As the official English language broadcasting partner for the Dota 2 tournament at the SLTV Star Series Season III finals, we (myself and

Toby ‘
TobiWanKenobi’ Dawson) were there as hired staff, so why joinDOTA was mentioned in the article at all made us wonder, as we believe it was clear that our position was distinct from the participating teams.
On the bright side, we would like you to know that we did not receive “free” food as alleged; we did our best to keep StarLadder’s costs low and paid all our meals ourselves except one, which was on the last day.
Additionally,
Niklas 'Wagamama' Högström, team captain of
Pulse eSports, has given us a statement in which he disputes how his words were portrayed in MYM's article:
The recent news article posted by MYM regarding Star Ladder is set in a very criticizing tone and I was shocked to see my statement being manipulated into making people believe I back all or most of their allegations. Fact is that I confirmed that we have not received our travel money yet, but I did not share their aggressive remarks on the accommodations provided by Star Ladder/V1lat. Me and my entire team and our sponsors are very happy to have a place to stay during our time in Kiev, and we would never complain unless we received less than what was promised. To my knowledge nobody ever promised the participating teams great hotel rooms, and most of us don't care. We were there to play, nothing else.
Big thanks to Star Ladder for going through the trouble to get free accommodations to all Dota 2 teams, something most events should admire and learn from!
Furthermore, Vitalii "v1lat" Volochai - the Dota 2 Tournament administrator, Russian language broadcaster and one of the event organisers for STLV - has made his own personal response to the allegations made by MYM, which can be read on his blog, as has
Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov - team captain of
Natus Vincere - in last night's episode* of talkDOTA, in which he refutes that his team received preferential treatment.
*joinDOTA apologises for the rude nature of some of Puppey's words.
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