dotaland note: Press conference going on in China with Perfect World, officially announcing the partnership with Valve.

Duowan and Sgamer have put up an interview with Erik Johnson of Valve, with some good insight. I’m sure it was done in English but I can’t find the original English source anywhere, only Chinese version… the interview seems like it had a lot of PR talk in it, so I’ll just quickly translate it a selection of the more interesting/revealing comments…

Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147555.html

Question (Q): Surely many players want to know the answer to this, rumors from Perfect World state that Dota2 will only go open to the public officially at the end of next year, is this for real?

Erik Johnson (EJ): We want our game to go open to Chinese players as soon as possible, players all over the world have already established a massive following. So we will work to allow Chinese gamers to join this following as quickly as possible.

Q: What brought Valve to choose Perfect World as the Chinese partner, and will there be even more partnership with them in the future?

EJ: First off, we have a very solid working background with Perfect World. Perfect World subsidiary Runic Games we know very well, they’re a bunch of geniuses, and their Torchlight series has been brilliantly received here in North America. We have a lot in common, so it’s not hard to understand why we chose to work together. Our company really pays attention to the players, and Perfect World has similar views on this. Perfect World is an able company, and they understand the Chinese market more than we do. There are a lot of things we need to learn from them.

Q: As for China’s large Dota following, I’m quite worried that the China servers will not be up to par.

EJ: This is something we’re worried about too, our advantage is that globally, we have built up a community of millions of gamers. This size of community is one that also requires a similar level of large scale server support. Our choice in Perfect World is also due to their ability and experience in handling this kind of thing, so for your question, we are carefully assessing solutions. Our hope is that we can solve the problem carefully, at the same time utilizing statistics and data to our advantage.

Q: Will the Dota2 International ever come to China?

EJ: The next International is still undecided as to where it will be held, after all the last International has just ended. But both our company and Perfect World recognize the importance of professional play. From a technical standpoint professional play can help other players learn more about the game and how to play the game, including for players such as myself. When Dota2 officially enters China we will hold many events, and players will be able to participate in a lot.

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Also, Anderson is announced as joining Perfect World in a product and events capacity: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201210/147552.html

As of August of this year, PW has been recruiting talent for their Dota2 work. Anderson has just been announced as joining Perfect World.