Quick DOTA 2 update
Hey everyone, I’m still very sick, but at least now my head no longer feels like it’s caught in a vice. The next Freeman’s Mind episode is coming soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to make a news update on the status of the Freeman’s Mind Announcer Pack for DOTA 2 as it just hit 10k votes on Steam. As promised, I’ve release a downloadable copy of the trailer for those of you interested in it (I’ll have an episode page on the site made for it later). More importantly I wanted to give you an update on the status of the pack itself. Right now the pack is currently in limbo. A few weeks ago I received the following email from Valve:
“
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
“
Unfortunately they have not told me WHY it’s incompatible. I can only assume it has partially due to the title containing the word “Freeman” as they may feel that hits too close to home with their intellectual property. If that’s the case, I’ll just rename the pack to something else, like “Ross Scott announcer pack.” Really that should be the only issue as far as IP goes. A bit of a spoiler, but the pack does NOT contain lines like “this one time at Black Mesa I saw this” or “that looks like a vortigaunt”, none of the lines themselves contain any direct references to Valve’s IP. Instead, I wrote all the lines with the same sort of personality established in Freeman’s Mind, so it’s more like Freeman “After Hours” rather than being full of HL2 references.
It’s also possible Valve has changed the rules for announcer pack submissions again in the time I submitted it to the time I received that email. It’s also possible they don’t like one line and it needs to be changed, or they just don’t like the sound of my voice, the point is I have NO IDEA why it’s being marked as incompatible. So while I could just try renaming the pack and resubmitting it, but my intuition tells me if I do that, I’ll just receive an email identical to the one above a few months from now with no other explanation. I do think this is kind of lame of them to send an email like that, but then give no other explanation and no means to contact them.
Despite being told it’s “incompatible” via email, the actual entry on Steam has NOT yet been marked as “incompatible” or “rejected”, so that makes me think there is hope for this still seeing the light of day.
I do not know who I should contact about this. The email sent to me was from [email protected]. I’ve tried contacting their front desk email, but have received no reply. If anyone has information how to actually communicate with someone at Valve about what needs to be fixed, please let me know. Until then, I’m completely in the dark on this.
ADHD version: Ross is still sick. Valve is playing “guess what number I’m thinking of” with the DOTA 2 voice pack.
