Team Undying resorts to community fundraiser for bootcamp before Dota 2 TI10

Team Undying, one of three North American teams to qualify for Dota 2’s The International 10, announced a fundraiser to set up a bootcamp before TI10.

In addition, David “MoonMeander” Tan Boon Yang revealed in a Twitlonger post the difficulties Team Undying has been facing since its formation in early 2021.

The thought of creating a gofundme did cross my mind, I did not want to rely on the community as we owe you guys so much already. However with sponsors and organizations declining/not responsive, I have no choice but to turn to you guys. https://t.co/0rZV0X15hs

— David Tan (@MoonMeanderated) August 4, 2021

Team Undying announced at the end of July that they will be going to TI10 as an independent team, which, in esports terms, means they will not be under contract with a conventional esports organization.

This also meant that they had to set up a bootcamp by themselves. The bootcamp factor is much more pertinent in Team Undying’s case, as the players constituting the team hail from different parts of the globe. This manifests ping issues and various other problems when it comes to practice games and scrims.

The difficulties in securing a Dota 2 bootcamp for Team Undying

The five players of Team Undying , Enzo "Timado" Gianoli, Jonathan "Bryle" Santos De Guia, Jonáš "SabeRLight-" Volek, Moonmeander, and Kim "DuBu" Doo-young, hail from different regions of the world.

Player	Country
Timado	Peru
Bryle	Canada
SabeRLight-	Czech Republic
MoonMeander	Canada
DuBu	South Korea

This makes it really difficult for Team Undying to play Dota 2 in a competitive manner in the absence of a bootcamp. Moreover, time zones are also a factor as MoonMeander stated in the TwitLonger post:

“I knew we were going to face uphill challenges with this roster as I've played with hFn and Khezu, who are from SA and EU. With an SA player, his ping/lag status is mostly luck based, sometimes good, sometimes bad, not much you can do about it. With an EU player, he's always going to be on delay, playing from 130~150 ping, ontop of having to stay up consistently to the late nights, sometimes till 6am, especially during bo5 grand finals.”

Team Undying is currently seeking $20,817 from the GoFundMe fundraiser to pay Waveform Entertainment, a company that provides bootcamp for esports teams.

The lack of sponsors in North America’s Dota 2 scene

Team Undying’s difficulty in securing a sponsor has brought light on the subject of the lack of sponsors in the North American Dota 2 scene. There are several factors behind big organizations not being interested in the Dota 2 scene of North America.

The most significant reason is surely the lack of stability of North American Dota 2 teams, as they tend to disband in a rather short period of time. This makes it really costly for potential sponsors.

Regarding this, MoonMeander stated:

“We carried this, alongside watching countless hours of discord streams, ping issues, no bootcamp, no org, no sponsor, we qualified to TI10. 5 years since my last TI, after playing in 3 regions, multiple kicks, multiple backstabs, definitely the roughest patch of my life, made it to TI. Nice. So now what you ask? Bootcamp. We have tried multiple times with sponsors/organizations, some even got poached, some want to wait till after TI10, some think NA is too unstable.”

Prior to TI10, a bootcamp is a basic requirement for Team Undying to be on par with other Dota 2 teams, most of which are backed by premium esports organizations.