Playing Dota Shouldn’t Feel Like Walking On Eggshells

Hey everyone,

Dojo team here.

Happy new year! We have been building the Dota Dojo for about six months now. We wanted to give you a clearer idea of where we are going in 2026, and who this community is designed to help. This is a shorter version of this video diary from BSJ on the Brian Canavan IRL Youtube channel.

At the start of the Dojo (around 6 months ago), we tried to be very selective and very harsh with rules because we wanted to do something different from normal Dota. We saw the norm in Dota was toxicity, and so we wanted to attack all forms of it.

If you were aggressive, passive aggressive, toxic, sarcastic, or anything of the sort, we would immediately correct it.

What happened was fear. People were afraid to act at all.

Then we swung the other way, more chances, more talking things out, more trying to nudge people into alignment. After a few months, we realized we were spending the majority of our time trying to correct people who were not in line with the Dojo.

This led us to a realization. We need to be clear about who the Dota Dojo is for and how we're fighting the toxicity problem in Dota.

But in order to understand this toxicity problem, you have to understand the two types of players we've been seeing in our community.

There is a dynamic in Dota that is hard to ignore. There are two types of people (in our eyes).

#1 - The Baby Rager. This is the toxic player who breaks items, throws games, and actively flames teammates. We've all seen it and some of you have perhaps been this person.
#2 - The Bystander. This is the player who sees the baby rager, sees the toxicity, and feels utterly powerless while their game gets thrown.

Those second people are who we resonate with. People who are trying, but do not know how to communicate, problem solve, or handle conflict without becoming part of the problem.

In the video, BSJ uses the therapy analogy to make a point. In a lot of real situations, the person seeking help is not the abuser, it is the person being abused.

And the thing is, you can't speak to both those people at the same time. The problems they face, the fears they have, and the limiting beliefs that hold them back from solving or improving their situations are fundamentally different.

So in the same way that you can't talk to an abuser or an abusee in the same way, you can't talk to the baby rager and the bystander in the exact same way. It doesn't work. It's just like politics. You can't talk to people on the left and the right at the same time. You can't talk to people who are avoidantly attached and anxiously attached at the same time, etc., etc.

In Dota terms, that means we are trying to help a very specific person reading this right now. It might be you; it might not.

Who we want to help is the person who makes one mistake and gets flamed, the person whose teammate breaks items, the person who feels powerless and does not know what to do. They are not “fine,” they are often paralyzed. If they speak up, they think the teammate throws. If they do not, they feel like they lose anyway.

If you relate you know the struggle.

If you are the person who has trouble controlling your emotions, trouble controlling your anger, and you find yourself breaking items, flaming your team, throwing tantrums, we can empathize, but we are not catering to these players for now.

We want to be very clear that we're not trying to help “baby-rage” type players in the Dojo. When we see these players in the community, we immediately correct them and we are swift with action because quite frankly we are not ready or able to help those people right now.

Instead, we want to focus on the bystanders: the people who want to make a positive impact but don't know how.

Those are the people we want to empower first.

Empowering the bystander does not mean telling you that it is your fault your teammate broke items.

It does not mean excusing toxic behavior.

And it does not mean pretending that the baby rager is not the problem.

What it does mean is recognizing a hard truth about Dota and about life.

You cannot control other people. You can learn how to respond to them in a way that gives you more agency, more clarity, and more control over your own experience.

Right now, most Dota players spend most of their energy trying to control things they cannot control. Teammates, attitudes, decisions, outcomes. That is exhausting. And it leads to burnout, tilt, and eventually becoming the exact type of player you hate playing with.

What we are trying to teach is the opposite.

Control the response. Build agency. Learn how to communicate in a way that does not escalate the situation. Learn how to protect your mental, your focus, and your enjoyment of the game even when things are going wrong.

This is a skill. And like any skill, most people were never taught it.

If your reaction to all of this is, “It’s just a game, stop overthinking it,” the Dojo is not for you.

If you believe there is nothing you can do differently, and that everyone else is always the problem, the Dojo is not for you.

But if you believe there might be something you can do differently, even if you have no idea what that is yet, then you are exactly who we are building for.

You do not need to have it figured out.

You just need to believe that there is something within your control worth working on.

That is the one requirement.

Looking Forward

In 2026, this focus is going to shape everything we do. Our rules, our culture, our events, and how we spend our time as a team.

Less energy trying to fix people who do not want to look inward.

More energy helping people who already feel something is wrong, but do not know where to start.

If you see yourself in the bystander described above, you are welcome here.

If you are tired of feeling powerless in your games, tired of walking on eggshells, and tired of Dota feeling worse than it should, this community is being built for you.

– The Dota Dojo Team