SabeRLight talks Immortal Draft spectators' restriction and the impact it had on the teams at TI2025

RDY GG had the chance to speak with Team Liquid’s Jonáš "SabeRLight-" Volek at The International 2025.

We picked his brain on what the NA scene needs to be revitalised, and we also touched on how SaberLight balances his schedule between competitive play, streaming and life outside the game. “It's hard to stream when you're a pro player,” said SabeRLight. “I think that's why most people don't do it.” While he himself found it hard to keep up a streaming routine this past season due to the packed tournament schedule, the other players at over 8,500 MMR might see a certain recent change as an opportunity to return to streaming.

Back in March this year, Valve decided to hide the high-MMR games. The threshold for restricting access to replays, stats, match history and any third-party tools was eventually set at 8,500 MMR. This directly impacted the way professional teams would do their research, and the implementation of this restriction was most evident at The International 2025.

SabeRLight was one of the vocal players against this new rule at first. But now, after seeing the impact at TI2025 and experiencing it himself, Team Liquid’s offlaner has a slightly different opinion about it. While he still thinks it’s “sad” that the average Dota 2 players can’t see their idols play outside tournaments, SabeRLight acknowledged that the official games are now “much more interesting.” Find out more about that and about how SabeRLight feels about his first season in Europe after playing for nearly five years in North America in the full interview below.

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• Omar: “If we play to our level, we will beat anyone”
• KJ: “Yuma and I were eating tacos and talking about how we are going to win TI”
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