Chinese state TV cuts footage from 'Free To Play', makes it look like it's about other games instead of Dota 2

Oh, CCTV! Just when we thought you were finally starting to get eSports and treat games with respect, you’ve got to go and do something like this.

CCTV5, one of China’s state run media networks, has caused a stir in China’s Dota 2 scene after the network ran a documentary program about eSports. All told, it’s a more friendly portrayal of the sport than anyone might have expected a few years ago, but weirdly, the show takes multiple clips from Valve’s Free to Play documentary, often re-cutting them into contexts that make it suggest the clips are about other games rather than Dota 2.

For example, at around 7:45 in the show, a clip from Free to Play is used to demonstrate the high prizes available to eSports gamers. But when the voiceover narrator translating the clip in Chinese says “This is the highest prize ever offered in an eSports competition to date,” he does not specify that he’s talking about Dota 2. And the images onscreen have been recut to show gamers playing Dungeon and Fighter, a popular Korean game operated in China by Tencent, instead of Dota 2. (This is the moment depicted in the featured image above).

More broadly, the show seems to place a lot of emphasis on the competitive Dungeon & Fighter and Crossfire scenes, despite the fact that it’s actually Chinese Dota 2 teams that are most likely to win big money internationally this year.

Conspiracy theorists have already pointed out that in addition to Crossfire and Dungeon & Fighter, Tencent also operates League of Legends, one of only two MOBA games ahead of Dota 2 in the Middle Kingdom. But the show actually doesn’t give much attention to League of Legends either, despite the fact that the revamped Demacia Cup now offers one of the biggest domestic tournament prize pools in China.

If you can understand Chinese, you can watch the CCTV show in full here. For those who’d rather see these clips in their natural habitat, Free to Play is embedded below: