Dota 2’s International series of yearly tournaments have always been the largest, prize-pool wise, due to community funding. Valve don’t even exploit this in their other major eSport, CS:GO, or for Dota 2’s Major tournaments throughout the year. This means that every year they have the highest prize pool of all time slot booked out, and TI6 is proving no different, having just passed over the $18,429,613 mark that was TI5’s high-water and currently sitting at $18,634,228. At the same time, Valve have revealed the third batch of Immortals for Battle Pass owners (those who’ve bought the compendium that funds TI6) and what the format will be for the tournament.
Get ready for next year’s tournament with the most effective Dota 2 characters you can play.
Your best bet for keeping track of this sort of thing is the magically named dota2.prizetrac.kr which shows all sorts of stats on its dedicated TI6 page. For example, there is no point in its history where TI6 has had less money dedicated to it than TI5 did on the same day. However, it hasn’t quite had the same growth per day as TI5 did on average, but does have higher spikes in funding. Basically: there’s about the same amount of people spending every day, but a higher interest and investment in the game overall.
For fans of numbers, given only 25% of Battle Pass-related sales actually go on prize pool, Valve have made about $54 million off this – though much of that is going on tournament production and such, of course.
This new maximum means the High Water Mark challenge has been completed, gifting a whole new batch of items to purchasers, as detailed on the official page. Valve also revealed the third batch of Immortals, the highest quality of cosmetic item available, including some lovely Slark gear.
As for the event itself, the TI6 format breaks down like this:
- Event Dates:
- August 2, 2016 – Wildcard
- August 3-5, 2016 – Group Stages
- August 8-13, 2016 – Main Event
- Format:
- Wildcard: Four teams (Complexity, EHOME, Escape Gaming and Execration) in a double elimination bracket. Top two teams advance to Group Stages.
- Group Stage: two groups of eight teams. Top four from each group advance to upper bracket of the Main Event. Bottom four go to the lower bracket.
- Main Event: 16 Teams in a final double elimination bracket. Based on previous years this will be best-of-three up until the Grand Finals best-of-five, though it’s possible some best-of-one games will take place as well.
Broadcast talent is yet to be announced, though personal favourite Alan ‘Nahaz’ Bester announced he wouldn’t be attending on Twitter earlier this month.
Final patches are also in progress, including bug fixes and localisation as well as one to add Dota 2’s next hero Underlord to the backend of the game.