Valve has announced the details of this year’s The International, the largest tournament in Dota 2. The tournament will start on the 5th of August and will take place in Stockholm, Sweden. You can read the official blog post shared by Valve on the subject here.
In a blog post shared last year, Valve announced that there would be no International tournaments in 2020 due to the epidemic. This led to Dota’s professional scene being almost completely silent throughout 2020. This situation has changed at the beginning of 2021 and the first Dota 2 Major was held in Singapore in March-April.
The group stage of the tournament will start on August 5th and end on the 8th. This year’s prize pool will be at least $ 40 million.
As for how attendance at the event will take place, Valve has not yet clarified the situation. This will highly depend on the global situation. Valve expects to answer this question in June.
In the same blog post, Valve also announced a major feature that concerns esports fans. With the new Supporters Clubs feature, fans will be able to support their teams by purchasing in-game items from professional players. 50% of the sales of these items will go directly to their favorite team. The new feature currently covers 17 teams, but will include more teams in the near future.
I think this year’s event will have only a limited number of live participants at best. In general, this will not affect the hundreds of thousands of people who will watch the tournament online. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that the tournament satisfies the audience. In this respect, I think Dota 2 fans will be satisfied with this iteration of The International.
