A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.

Izi katka: the Russian "gg ez" of Dota

What this meme means

Izi katka ("easy game") is a post-match taunt in Russian Dota that shrank to "ez" and merged with the international "gg ez."

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Easy, katka, and the vocabulary of the original Dota

Izi is a calque of the English easy, and katka is gamer slang for a match. The 2021 cyber.sports.ru blog post "How did the old-timers talk?" recalls that people used to spell it all out: "izi katka, izi mid, izi kill." The word izi also turns up in the 2020 blog post "5 memories of DotA Allstars," among the vocabulary of the original Dota era.

The Russian phrase has no known author or first use; it is organic slang with no known original source. The year 2012 on the card is the earliest dated record of the word in a Dota glossary, not the date the expression was born.

The "easy lane" and gg after the match

In the dota2.ru slang guide published on August 20, 2012, izi also has a purely gameplay meaning: the "easy lane." That was the bottom lane for Radiant and the top lane for Dire. In other words, in the earliest dated record found, izi meant not a taunt but a part of the map.

The same guide explains "GG" as "good game," typed after a match. It specifically notes that "gg" is also written to mock the opponent.

How izi katka shrank to ez

Over time only izi survived from the longer phrases, and then it was cut down to the Latin "ez." The meaning stayed the same: a post-match taunt aimed at the opponent. In 2021 the author of "How did the old-timers talk?" noted that nobody had typed "gg izi katka" at the end of a game for a long time: everyone settles for a short "ez."

The word also spread beyond Dota. On January 28, 2017, the outlet Mel.fm listed izi as general teen slang meaning "easy, simple." In the comments on that article, readers explained that izi katka means doing something effortlessly, while its opposite is potnaya katka, a "sweaty game."

International gg and ez

The English version has its own history. "GG" was first recorded on the Internet Chess Club website in October 1999 and then spread to Diablo II and StarCraft. The first Urban Dictionary entry for "EZ" is dated March 10, 2003.

"GG EZ" emerged as a sarcastic way of telling an opponent the match was easy. The Russian post-match izi katka carries the same taunt, but sources describe it as separate organic slang that grew out of a calque of the English easy.

Fear at The International 2015 in the photo

In the catalog the meme is illustrated with a photo from The International 2015: a smiling Evil Geniuses player, identified by the file caption as Fear, in team gear, with the edge of the Aegis of Champions visible at the bottom. It is not a chat screenshot or a match still, but a photo from the tournament.

The player's smile next to the Aegis of Champions conveys the mood of a winner for whom everything seemingly came "ez." The captions for the picture build on that image.

Example izi katka captions

These examples are made up for illustration: "Me after winning a Turbo game at minute 18," "When you win one game out of ten and already type 'ez'," "'Gg ez,' he said, finishing the game 2/9," "When the enemy typed 'ez' at minute 15, and half an hour later your team took down their throne."

Such captions poke fun at someone who types "ez" with no reason to, for example when teammates carried the win. That way the taunt turns into a joke about the person doing the taunting.