And it’s climbing.
Gamers and non-gamers from around the world were blown away last year when the DOTA 2 International 2014 was revealed to have a near $11 million prize pool. It cast aside beliefs that eSports was not a sport and that it wasn’t widely viewed or appreciated. When tickets for admission for the event at the KeyArena Centre in Seattle, Washington went on sale, they were sold out within an hour. 11 teams were directly invited to the participate in the tournament while 41 teams were invited to the qualifiers.
DOTA 2 is the game that reinvigorated the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre, which until that time was only known through Defense Of The Ancients, or DOTA, a custom map and gamemode designed for the famous Warcraft 3. I remember the time when playing DOTA in dimly lit cafes was the highlight of a gamer’s day. Years on, it still is, with the MOBA genre having branched out to include games such as League Of Legends (LOL) and Heroes Of Newerth (HON).
Widely known as “The International” by participants and viewers, it has held the title for being the most widely viewed e-gaming championship and for having the largest prize pool in electronic gaming history. It was born in 2011 at Gamescom in Cologne, hosted by Valve (the creators of DOTA 2) with only a $1.6 million prize pool. It was intended as more of a showcase for the DOTA 2 game itself than as a display of the competitors skills, as a result it was the first public viewing of DOTA 2 since the game’s reveal. The International 2012 was pretty much the same event with the same prize pool, albeit different qualifying teams. It was in 2013 that things started to pick up for the championship. In May an interactive compendium was made available for purchase, detailing and cataloging the progression of The International. A quarter of the revenue from the compendium was added to the prize pool, bringing it up to $2.8 million. It was also the first time in The International’s history where it was viewed concurrently online by over a million people, many utilising Twitch.tv to do so. The following year, as aforementioned, had the biggest prize pool in eSports history, clocking in at $11 million.
The International 2015 promises to be bigger than ever before and its prize pool is a testimony to that promise. For six grueling days spanning from August 3rd to the 8th teams will battle out to qualify and ultimately have the chance to bear the title of best DOTA 2 team of the year, all the while watched from around the world by fans through streaming services such as Twitch.tv.
My only regret is not scrounging up some friends and trying to qualify. Who knows, we may have walked away with the still rising first place prize, which at the time of writing this article is $6,189,159. Perhaps there’s still time to qualify for the League of Legends World Championship in October?
What do you think of eSports in general? Do you think such a large prize pool is absurd for a video game tournament? Comment below with your thoughts!
