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Dota 2 International becomes largest prize pot for a single event

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While League of Legends $5 million prize pool for its entire season may still beat the prizes on offer at this year’s Dota International, that’s a pot stretched out over a whole season and final tournament. With the money raised by the International Interactive Compendium, Valve’s Dota 2 tournament is offering a almost $2 million dollars in prizes for a single ladder tournament. The largest prize pot for a single tournament in all of eSports.

Last year’s International saw a prize pot of $1.6 million split across 16 teams, with the top team taking home $1 million in prize money. This year’s tournament began with that same ratio split but also with a new system to crowdfund the prize pool: Valve began selling an item called The International Interactive Compendium, a $10 item that would keep you up to date with all the goings-ons of the tournament and offer opportunities to bet on the games. 25% of each purchase, $2.50, would be added to the tournament’s prize pool.

Sales of the Compendium have raised almost $400,000 for the prize pool. Valve are driving purchases by offering stretch goals to Compendium owners.

The final stretch goal Valve have listed is unlocked at $3.2 million, at which point Compendium owners get to vote on which hero Valve release next for Dota 2.

What this means outside of The International is that Valve are now offering the largest single prize pot for an eSport’s tournament. And this is for a game which is still in beta. It would seem that Valve are pretty serious about getting Dota 2 to the top of the MOBA pile.

We’ve reached out to Valve to ascertain how these crowdfunded winnings will be split across the winners, whether it will retain the ratio of the current prizes all will be used to provide some take home money for the losers.