The International Dota 2 and Its Huge Prize Pool

The International (TI) is a yearly Dota 2 eSports tournament hosted by the game’s developer, Valve Corporation. The first tourney took place in 2011 in Cologne, Germany, and was hosted shortly after the public release of Dota 2. The prize pot for that first year’s tournament was $1.6 million. The prize pot started increasing for the third year and has only grown since then. The eighth international will be held August 20^th through 25^th in Vancouver, Canada, this month, and has a prize pool of $24,246,140.00 US. The winner will receive 44 percent of the total pool.

The Massive TI8 Prize Pool

The prize pool for the tournament is crowdfunded, and called the “Battle Pass.” It raises money from the Dota 2 community as participants work to build up their Battle Pass levels. When players unlock higher tiers of the Battle Pass, they unlock different and unique rewards. Some of the rewards include:

• a mission-like incentive to try new Heroes in Cavern Crawl
• new lane creep skins
• an MMO-ish player-v-player mode
• sprays that appear on the map
• Mutation Mode
• Team Challenge
• in-game tipping of Battle Points that participants receive as a reward for good plays
• and new this year, a role-based matchmaking queue where Battle Pass owners can set their Lane Preference before they enter the queue (lanes are Safe, Mid, Off-lane, or Support
• and much more.

The Dota 2 community has a goal each year to raise the largest prize pool among all of esports. If this year’s total beats last year’s amount of $24,787,916, every Battle Pass owner will get 10,000 bonus Battle Points. If the final amount exceeds $30,000,000 then Battle Pass owners will get another 10,000 Battle Points each.

As in earlier years, 25 percent of the proceeds from the Battle Pass sales effort go to the prize pool for The International. This year, the prize pool started at $1.6 million and has eclipsed many early expectations following the launch of the Battle Pass, which . According to the official website, a Level 1 Battle Pass costs $9.99 US, up through $36.99 for a Level 75 Battle Pass. Players can also buy levels: five levels for $2.49 US, 11 levels for $4.99 US, and 24 levels for $9.99 US. Of course, players can raise their Battle Levels by playing in order to unlock exclusive rewards by completing Battle Pass objectives.

Rule Adjustment for TI8

The latest rule adjustment means that teams are awarded points throughout the year when they participate in Valve-endorsed DPC tournaments. The eight teams with the most points will be invited to TI, and remaining spots will be filled by qualification. Valve recently announced to the media that for the TI9, the top 12 teams will be invited.

TI8 General Info

TI8 will be held at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver. Primary media coverage will go through twitch.tv, a live streaming platform. Multiple streams will be offered in a variety of languages and there will possibly be a “newbie stream” that will be dedicated to showing each game for viewers who don’t know the game or its rules.