Alliance не читеры, они — буквоеды*

From time immemorial, clever bureaucrats and their relatives, lawyers, have been saying: carefully read the fine print. This applies to everything and to everyone, and the Dota community with all these contract stories should be aware of this truth most of all others.

Read the small print and read the small paragraphs. Especially when it concerns Valve's products. They never bother to elaborate on any details, because if it is written in their statement (read: press release), the responsibility for the implementation or non-implementation lies solely with us, the media, teams, organizations, players, and so on.

Would I surprise you if I said that Valve generally doesn't care if you have a coach during a match or not? I think I would not. Valve Inc.'s character has already formed quite clearly in our eyes, so this was quiet expected.

According to the teams, the following text could be found in the letters that were sent to everyone before the start of the 2020/21 DPC season:

Alliance did nothing wrong. After all, it is the same in life: the winner is the one who finds a loophole in the rules (and in this case, literally just follows them) before others. It's good that this topic was revealed right now, during the insignificant matches of the DPC league, and not during the Major Playoffs.

Yes, the "CEO of OG" may have spoken out about the dishonesty of the situation and "cheating", but for someone, for the captain of the team that won TI through open qualifiers and with the help of a little-known and little-used bunch of heroes, there is no need to find fault with someone like that. Perhaps this is simple envy: the loophole was found earlier by Loda's team than by N0tail's.

The following situation is interesting: PGL banned coaches from participating in their matches.

Do they have the right to do so? Apparently, haha, Valve doesn't care. This is where the injustice manifests itself: in some tournaments, a coach is allowed within the common DPC, in others it is not. And if Valve doesn't decide who will? And what is justice then?

The most—IMHO—objective opinion was added by Aui_2000 in his Twitter.

TL;DR: all this, of course, is great, and the teams are responsible themselves, but not every tier-2 stack can afford a coach, and it seems that the DPC has been created to make competition fair.

So what, now a new era awaits? Will all top teams use coaches during matches, or is it the other way around? It is unlikely that Valve will release an additional explanation of their rule.

However, Alliance did nothing wrong. Read the fine print.

UPD:

ESL have released a statement regarding the incident. They've brought back the original rules so no coaches during the map.