And you really think valve will say ok, we will allow you to get stats again? no.
Valve is trying to make a monopoly out of Dota. Just like how blizzard doing with wow.
They don't want anyone to make money or do anything to their game, All they care about right now is their treasure key sale rate per day.
If valve could make money by shitting on the community's head, they'd do it.
Of course valve is making monopoly out of Dota. It is their game, they have tens if not hundreds of people working on it and they pay salary to those people. Why should they let someone make money on their game?
Don't forget it is a business, they invest their money to build game everyday and they plan to make a profit on that as well. Valve should profit on their invesment, not some dotabuff guys who are ignorant enough to ask people to fix it for them, instead fixing it themselves.
Dota is not something made by valve.
Dota was made by community. Valve just abused the fact that icefrog worked with them to make a dota 2.
I don't know what he is doing but i feel he is not involved in dota 2 development, He just makes a wc3 dota map and valve ports the balance values to their game. Though i'm not sure of that, I'm just assuming which could be wrong.
I can play Dota 2 which is a true import of WC3Dota for FREE.
That's the most important part that put Valve in my 1st rank of game company list.
Have I spend any money with this game?
Ain't give a shit nor a dime about any monetizing part of the game.
Cosmetics? 0 $.
Buying heroes? 0 $. This ain't LoL nor HoN.
Tourneys tickets? 0 $. You can watch all the stream at 3rd party websites.
Team Pennants? 0 $.
With 0 $, I get all the fun I can get. So I trust Valve on this decision.
DB should keep their shits real, bounce back already and just man up with what Valve has decide.
^
This made me laugh irl.
Because you are not paying to valve does not mean they are not greedy by putting shop in priority over everything else in the game.
Man up with what Valve has decided? You mean, completely disregarding the middle step between pro and pub play, and leaving a massive void that they want nobody to fill, and provide no means or signs of progression? Nah, I'd rather play league of bads and actually be able to play at a somewhat competitive level with supported third party leagues and viable progression. Its a shame I have to do it with what could easily be described as an inferior game, but gotta do what you gotta do. At least Riot know how to manage a community, even if it is a horrible and incredibly shitty one.
Ain't give a shit about the others as long as I can play without paying a single dime.
Not as greedy as any other game companies that I know.
You can play League of bads or Heroes of newbs for all I care in the world.
Don't need to pay to play league, hon or blc either, you could instead call valve greedy for wanting to shaft any company that does a better job of providing information than they do. Riot doesn't shut down lolking, blizzard doesn't shut down curse or ask mr robot, so why should valve be the special kid in the park that has to be the reason for people not having nice things?
Because the way DB datamined DOTA 2 MM data is illegal. And with that illegal way, DB want to try monetize it.
You can google it for more info, because I'm not that good in explaining that.
Oh, I can quote someone for your question:
"Terrafros schrieb:
I must point out that everything we know now is based on assumption and speculation.
Mind you, it is not the privacy setting that DOTABUFF shut down from. It is the fact that Valve closed the method that DOTABUFF was using to get data from Dota 2.
There are two APIs. One is for the client, and intended only for the client, which gives access to everything which includes steam friends lists, replay urls, for a while it even showed your MMR. The second API is a WebAPI, that was specifically designed for third parties like DOTABUFF to pull data from and build sites around. However, instead of using or waiting for the WebAPI to finish implementation, DOTABUFF chose to use a method which deceives the Valve servers into thinking that their own data aggregation programs are actually the Dota 2 client.
There now is a WebAPI, that is fully supported by Valve, and accessible by every single person that wants to use it, even you and me. Unlike DOTABUFF's method, it is not illegal, and it is likely going to receive a lot of development to show a lot of useful features.
So, to summarise: DOTABUFF pulled data from the Valve servers using a backdoor into the API intended for the Dota 2 client, and Valve decided they did not want third parties to use this backdoor and use the actual official provided WebAPI instead. The fact they asked people payment for this illegal method probably played a part as well."
follow up:
"Terrafros schrieb:
You all are not getting the point.
DOTABUFF used an illegal method of acquiring the data they used on their site, and Valve has closed that method. It is not the privacy setting that shut DOTABUFF down, it is the fact that they can no longer use this illegal method because Valve fixed this backdoor into their servers.
The WebAPI is still fully available, and already gives a ridiculous amount of data that can be used on stat aggregation sies, but DOTABUFF refuses to use it because it doesn't show as much as the full API intended for the client does."
source: http://www.joindota.com/en/news/6431-dotabuff-shuts-down,-back-up-updated/&comment_page=2#comments
Edit: And yeah sure in lol and hon you don't need to pay for playing, but with a lot of drawbacks. Surely I don't need to explain what are the drawbacks.
Far from illegal. Underhanded maybe, undesired maybe, unintended by valve maybe, but at the time was the only, and still is the best way of doing it. By restricting WebAPI that much, hardcapping the amount of requests over a period of time and yet again refusing to communicate with anyone, community or company, valve are yet again showing they care not for third parties looking to provide a good service that valve clearly can't.
Yeah, and it's all based on our assumption and maybes.
On Valve's side, they sure are lacking in communication and PR sector.
But on the DB's side, they sure are overleaking on the childish behavior and poor situation handling.
Well, I'm on Valve side on this one.
Trolls: Valve cares because DBR isn't representative of someone's skill. Nor is it even close. By allowing DBR to exist it will cause it to shape views and attitudes in Dota 2. It brings division to the community in what is suppose to be a game that is heavily reliant on teamwork.
Valve has made it clear they are against MMR being public (at least for now) so why would Dota Buff be so retarded as to go against the makers of the game's wishes? They have no right to shape and determine a ratings system for Dota 2 players. That arena is Valves.
Dota Buff should just stick to offering comprehensive stats that Valve currently doesn't offer. Valve is happy for third parties to take that responsibility up. Going over their head when Valve has expressed they are against MMR is not acceptable.
How do you even begin giving a rating for skill when there are over 90 different heroes in the game and they all play differently? Do you really believe DBR is representative of player skill?
they could have just warned them, i mean valve must have warned dotabuff staff or manager that they dont feel that DBR is going to improve the community, and not just release this option just a day before the release of DBR, which they put in so much offer and investment..
if they thought that this DBR copied or revealed the secret of MMR or some thing near to this, they would have just told them we arent comfortable with this idea, and dotabuff would have stopped introducing and improving the DBR and such, and about the money thingy, they would stop all non official tournaments, as ppl get money from them, which is not valves money, and they wont share some of the profit with the tournament's organiser, about dotabuff, again i repeat, they could have just told them, "we dont want this new site update, the old site is better for us", and dotabuff would have stopped..
valve could have solved the issue with some negotiation, and not through this way..
Maybe they learned from Bounty Hunter how to backstab..
u can not decline that dotabuff.com rly helped many ppl to improve or to try playing better to increase their Winning rate..
Well actually Dota Buff was reverse engineering to scrape the stats so Valve didn't owe Dota Buff anything since technically Dota Buff has been in the wrong for months with their method of stat scraping.
Also DotaBuff have exaggerated the amount of communication they've had with Valve. A few email exchanges doesn't amount to a working relationship. Also after the way DotaBuff handled this situation by trying to get the DotaBuff community to abuse Valve and giving Icefrog's email away...? Really?
Yeah real professionals...
Who do you think released .dem structure to get data from it?
Who do you think released a software to export data from an official dota 2 replay?
It was VALVE. take a look. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dota_2_Demo_Format
"We are curious to see what people come up with using this tool' They were curious, so db showed them what can be done with this. Reverse engineering? this is not a cracking forum, DB just used what valve offered. they can't just say noooo we don't want people to use this anymore, you should use webapi in just one single day..
Yes, DB's act on closing the site was childish, but they opened it again and are acting mature again.. But what is valve doing? Just closing threads on dev.dota2 lol
Sorry for the downtime, it has caught us by surprise and I feel bad for it. Valve has not given any indication of what they didn't like with our latest update and didn't give us any advance warning that thy would shut down our data collection method.
We sent an email to Valve on Friday and are waiting to hear back. In the mean time, I'm working to transition us to the Web API in order to start gathering new match data. Doing so will limit or remove a lot of functionality on the site, but it's better than nothing. Thank you for your patience while we complete this work.
Jason, Dotabuff
'DBR is not representative of skill'
Any elo-based system is representative of skill. You don't get high rating from being shit. Its that simple. Do you think Kasparov hit 2.8k+ elo rating from being a shitty chess player? Don't be so foolish. The argument of the sizeable number of heroes is also bullshit. Nobody is going to be fully proficient with every hero, people are always going to specialise in different things. General game sense and knowledge isn't something that's going to change if you pick a different hero.
Viruser: DB was violating the ToS by using a custom client-based API to use on Dotabuff, which involves reverse-engineering the client. It was an exploit...Valve closed it and provided third parties the opportunity to use the WebAPI from now on...which is Valves accepted way of gathering.
No I think DBR is not representative at all of skill...but there are rating systems that are relatively accurate at determining skill rating...clear distinction.
There's a clear distinction between a player that has, say, 900 dbr and a player who has 2500, therefore it is representative, but not necessarily particularly accurate. The correlation will still exist, it just doesn't have to be a very strong one.
"Viruser: DB was violating the ToS by using a custom client-based API to use on Dotabuff, which involves reverse-engineering the client. It was an exploit...Valve closed it and provided third parties the opportunity to use the WebAPI from now on...which is Valves accepted way of gathering."
Nope, you still don't understand
What DB was doing, was they downloaded the replays and extracted stats from them. valve allowed this since they released a parser tool.
Then suddenly valve changes their mind and stops DB from downloading lots of replays because replays are for dota 2 clients only. But if it was for clients only why did they release a parser tool at the first place?
The problem is not that Valve shut down the client access, the problem is the way they did it. It was obvious that DotaBuff would release DBR after losing access to the data so there shouldn't have been any rush on implementing the privacy. And the way DB handled it is commendable (releasing only private rating). But the timing and haste on the removal of the replay links is a huge blow to what community sites can do, limiting lots of functionality not only on DotaBuff. Valve obviously rushed the privacy setting functionality and public replay availability was obviously a loophole in that. They deemed it more important to destroy the best way to get data for community sites in the name of some "privacy", than to communicate and work with those sites. In the process they killed both present and future features that could have come from these community sites.
It's not like anyone could build a community site overnight to serve millions of pages and parse tens of millions of replays to provide some nice stats. Valve only needed to assign one of their Dota 2 community managers (if they have any) to do their job and communicate with the couple of sites that do this and work with them in relaying their wishes and goals . The way they handled it like someone already said "shitting on the heads of the community". For fuck sake, even the poll on their own forum (as misguided as it is) has 75% votes in favor of DotaBuff.
@ Viruser: Nope. You answered your own question. It doesn't make sense because you don't actually grasp how it was working. ;)
@Jam: Take a look at TF2 to see what is possible with Steams WebAPI. It takes work and time but eventually if the right people put in the work it will be possible for very comprehensive stat database to be created without compromising on peoples want for private profiles.
It seems that DotaBuff are now going to follow through and build around WebAPI so soon enough we should see some developments. This is the way they should have responded initially.
Mr Affluenza, a lot of data is not available in Dota's WebAPI: item build, skill build, bear's items, chat log, CM picks/bans. Also, DBR cannot be calculated anymore. That is all of their recent work that have to be discarded. And it has nothing to do with the privacy.
Yeah I understand that but if you don't use a supported, conventional API, and the owners pull the carpet out from under you, the blame doesn't go to them. Exactly the same thing happened with Google and their WeatherAPI; it was an undocumented, unsupported API which people scratched off the iGoogle pages, and built entire applications on top of. The blame did not lie with Google when they pulled the plug on it.
Valve have released the WebAPI they feel protects their data. However, as Valve have shown (and I really dislike the way people are suddenly ignoring Valves incredible history as a customer/gamer-centric organisation) they very often have a plan, and I think (as Cyborgmatt puts it) that they really need to be pushing for WebAPI improvements instead of drama.
For example, with slight development the WebAPI could be modified to allow full, but anonymous, data dumps, which could then be made public without fear of an negative DBR/MMR system being implemented. Alternatively, DotaBuff could completely scrap their DBR idea, alert Valve of this, and ask Valve for special access which allows them to access matches.
You are right that using this kind of data source is not ideal. However, this is a very big website that a large portion of Dota 2 players use. (I don't know the actual numbers, correct me if I'm wrong.) It is in both companies interest to make the transition smooth. And Valve didn't do this. They chose to shut it down silently in one day without notifying anyone, given that the things Dotabuff said are true.
And as I said, this is not about privacy. They could make a smooth transition while respecting privacy concerns. I hardly believe that in one day Valve was sued and obliged to hide players data from 3rd parties.
you are all childrens dotabuff! , acussing valve the one who gave us dota 2. If you dont know how to use web api,, go for pacman stats!
@Mr Affluenza
Don't forget that replay parsing is also provided and endorsed by Valve. I never said that scraping the data from the client was right for the community to do, but unfortunately it was the only way with the WebAPI being down for 6 months. The problem as Pi so nicely put is that Valve didn't work with the community to work out their concerns - no, they simply showed everyone who's the boss.
Now imagine yourself in the shoes of a community developer. You build a serious site hosting hundreds of thousands of page views daily. You invest both time and serious amounts of money to do it. And let's not kid ourselves, no matter how big your love for the game, at the end you will be looking at some kind of monetary compensation, to cover your costs and time if nothing else. And the community profits too if you can, as the service will be good.
You live in the illusion that this "community" orientated company is actually fond of your site. You position yourself that way, respecting them and expecting the same in return. Than one day you wake up and find that they have decided that all the work you have put into the site for the past months somehow is in disagreement with their "goals", so they destroyed everything you did without any prior notice.
Tell me please, how pissed you would be at that moment?
P.S. let's not kid ourselves about the average Joe being able to maintain a Dota 2 stats site. If DotaBuff was honest about the 750.000 unique monthly visitors, it would take a serious organisation to provide the resources needed for such a site.
To all the people saying they could just remove the update and go forward like before, that would be great, but you don't know a whole lot about copyright law. If Valve doesn't pursue legally, it sets a legal precedent in the future that they do not care about protecting their IP. Lawyers will advise companies to take action against a fan site that reverse engineers their software. Plain and simple, you have to do it, or when someone in the future does it famously they can get away with it on the grounds that there is no consistency in following up on TOS violations or something of the sort.
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Remove last update and contac Valve. I guess they shut donw dotabuff cause of this, as they closed it after ''paying'' update