«Dude, can you pick a real hero?» — Twitch viewers reactions during The International 2023 Grand Final

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Dota 2 fans were looking forward to The International 2023 grand final for an entire year; it was the grand final that attracted the largest audience of the tournament, and it was on this day that the main broadcast chat was most active. Esports Charts has analyzed viewers’ activity in the chat: the ratio of chat activity to the number of viewers on the channel fluctuated throughout the stream, and it turned out that most messages were sent not during the matches but during the break before the Grand Final.

Two series were played on the final day of the tournament: the lower bracket final between LGD Gaming and Gaimin Gladiators (the latter won 2:0), as well as the Grand Final featuring Gaimin Gladiators and Team Spirit. In addition to this, the organizers held a cosplay contest and announced the winners of the short film competition. The total duration of the broadcast was approximately 9.5 hours; throughout the stream, dota2ti channel viewers sent 185.3K messages, that is roughly 322 messages per minute.

Before the start of the matches, as well as during the drafting phase, viewers actively used the DrumTime emote. This emote fits perfectly with the tournament's background music theme. Usually, viewers can hear a dull drum melody on the broadcast, signaling the imminent start of the match. Spamming the DrumTime emote in the chat effectively emphasized that the game would soon begin.

During the matches, viewers mostly used emotes as reactions to team actions. For example, they often spammed the OSFrog emote when a certain game mechanic was not working correctly. By using the OSFrog emote, viewers were calling on the game developer, IceFrog, to pay attention to an overpowered character or artifact.

Among the popular emotes, we can mention KEK, LUL, FailFish, BibleThump, Pog, SeemsGood, DendiFace, etc. These are all standard emotes used to express laughter, joy, sadness, approval, fear, shame, and so on. Usually, they were used depending on the situation in the match. Another popular emote was DinoDance, the first animated emote on Twitch.

The viewers' activity in the chat consistently increased towards the end of the matches. This is logical since the finale is usually the most eventful part: teams make decisive attacks, execute comebacks, purchase key artifacts, and so on.

The highest activity of viewers in the chat did not occur during the matches but during the break before the Grand Final. Before the decisive series, the organizers held a cosplay contest, and during this period, the number of messages in the channel chat increased to 4.1K within a five-minute interval. For comparison, at the end of the lower bracket finals, this indicator reached a maximum of 2.2K messages, and at the end of the grand finals, it reached 3.9K.

On the final day of the tournament, the copypasta text "Dude can you pick a real hero HOLY crap why are we picking pango in 2023?" gained great popularity. It was written almost 3K times in the chat during the broadcast. This copypasta consists of the words of Quinn, the midlaner of Gaimin Gladiators, who criticized players for choosing the hero Pangolier during one of the broadcasts. However, Quinn occasionally plays Pangolier, and in the Grand Final, this hero appeared in each of the three maps. Often, this copypasta was accompanied by the pangoRoll emote.

The International 2023 took place from October 19 to October 29 in Seattle. Team Spirit became the champion of the tournament. Detailed viewership statistics of the event can be found on the coverage page.

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