Update to DOTA 2 pack

Ross Scott

Ross Scott

Staff member
I would normally make this a news article in itself, but I don't want to bump Gorilla Gong so fast. I've received an email from Valve saying the following:

"

Thank you for your Steam Workshop Contribution Freeman's Mind Announcer Pack.

Unfortunately, for various reasons, the developers of "Dota 2" had to flag it as "incompatible", so it cannot be used within "Dota 2".

You can learn more about what kinds of items are accepted and why certain items are marked as "incompatible" here: http://www.dota2.com/workshop/

The Steam Support Team

http://www.steampowered.com

"

Just calling this "incompatible" with no other explanation is pretty lame. My guess is it's the title. I could rename this to "Ross Scott Announcer Pack" if that's the case. If so, I could resubmit it, although I'm not sure what the procedure is for that. For all I know, I could have one line they don't like, so that's why it's being rejected. It's frustrating not being given any reason for this. If anybody has any suggestions about this, let me know.

 
Well, that's unfortunate. I've done some quick research, so these are my suggestions:

First, I would immediately answer the email asking what specifically is incompatible about the announcer pack. I have no idea whether you would get an answer, but at least you can try. And they know best what they didn't like, so they may be cooperative. Especially if you show interest in improvement.

Second, after reading through the site which they linked to (here) and the requirements for Announcer Packs (here) which are on the same site, I would suspect the reason to be either copyright infringement or something technical in the way the announcer works.

Third, after doing a Google search on the topic, I found this site which lists submissions flagged as incompatible. By the looks of it, the problem really is the title and its copyright infringement, as Valve seems to have blocked other announcers using their character names. That may seem strange, as they own the copyright on their games, but well, that's how it is. But given that they do release announcers based on their characters themselves, it is understandable.

In the light of this, it is probably the best idea to change the name of the pack. 'Ross Scott Announcer Pack' is a viable idea, but perhaps you could try to just replace every mention of 'Freeman' in the pack name and trailer by something like 'That guy', 'The right man (in the wrong place)' or even simply 'Gordon'. Referencing the name without saying it might be a compromise between you and Valve.

Perhaps you could directly ask in the email whether it would be possible for them to change the name of the announcer pack, if you aren't allowed to. You might also want to contact them as soon as possible, as we don't know how long they wait before flagging the pack as incompatible in the workshop.

Well, that's about everything I can think of right now. I hope this can be resolved.

 
The email is from "[email protected]", I don't think I'll get a reply.

Who do I ask about this?

What's the process for resubmitting?

I have no problem changing the title, but if it's about something else, that would seem kind of pointless. I'm willing to revise this pack as needed, but giving me no reasons is just blind firing.

 
I think I have heard of people getting a reply by replying to a noreply address, but it's probably not worth the try.

I guess you could contact Steam Support at http://support.steampowered.com. It seems that you must create an extra support account, though.

You could also post in the Steam Community forum, but I don't know whether the people there would be able to access your account information. I don't know whether there are official representatives at all.

I don't know for resubmitting. Sounds like doing it all over again and starting with 0 ratings again to me. I have no idea if Valve would notice a title change or if you have to do it anew.

 
From what I can see, I'd start by contacting Steam Support, tell them exactly what you got for an e-mail, and tell them why it's the opposite of helpful for making the pack useable. If they can't find the problem, I'd guess that we're all out of luck. (maybe even link them to this site, it might help your case)

 
It's really stupid they waited until 8.6k votes to tell you that. I don't know how many people would know to re-vote.

 
That's really frustrating. Sounds like they wouldn't know constructive criticism if it came from Freeman himself. I don't actually play Dota 2 (I was going to download it and buy the pack if it got added but now...), so part of me thinks Mr. Scott should just abandon this and stop wasting time that could be spent working more on Gorilla Gong or Freeman's Mind. But cause it sounds like you've spent SO much time on this, it feel like an even bigger waste if nothing were to come of it. All that effort not amounting to squat would sure piss me off, plus there were some honest to God funny lines in there it's not even just about the effort it actually seems worth having in Dota, so part of me would suggest He keep trying to contact Valve or Steam and hope for an actual explanation for why the mod pack is "incompatible" and then change it based on their feedback. I'm conflicted; maybe you are too. Well regardless, I hope this gets resolved and if I do learn anything about Valve/Steam/Dota policy on mod packs I'll post it here.

 
Forgive me for not being that familiar with the game, since i only started playing a few weeks ago, but is it not possible to just add this pack in ourselves in the game files?

I come from a mostly TF2 background, and if any of you have played it youll know its easy to mod something just by shoving in some files

I know it wouldnt work from an inventory item standpoint like that, but is it not possible to allow us to download the files for it, and replace the default announcers files with these new files? Just until you get it greenlighted, that is, then we can get it easily

Amazing voice work, might I add, ive been following the forum and the series for ages and i only just signed up here to suggest that ^

 
It's most likely without a doubt the name Freeman, I was worried this would happen at the start because Valve would probably never accept something like this, probably because people would confuse it to the real Freeman? I'm not really that sure but that seems like the most possible reason. Renaming it to Ross Scott Announcer Pack would probably make it acceptable.

Forgive me for not being that familiar with the game, since i only started playing a few weeks ago, but is it not possible to just add this pack in ourselves in the game files?I come from a mostly TF2 background, and if any of you have played it youll know its easy to mod something just by shoving in some files

I know it wouldnt work from an inventory item standpoint like that, but is it not possible to allow us to download the files for it, and replace the default announcers files with these new files? Just until you get it greenlighted, that is, then we can get it easily

Amazing voice work, might I add, ive been following the forum and the series for ages and i only just signed up here to suggest that ^
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Well he said he wanted to make profit from this so I don't think he would really want to do that, i'm not too familiar with how the announcer packs work, but I believe that Ross is using wayyy more lines than the default announcer, so you can't just replace the sound files.

 
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