Valve’s Dota 2 ‘The International 4’ is Going to be Bigger than Ever

The International is an annual professional Dota 2 tournament going on its fourth year. It set a record in 2011 for having the largest prize pool for any eSports event in history, but in 2013 Valve hit on the idea of partially crowdfunding the prize pool through sales of event compendiums. While not required to actually watch the event in-game or via Twitch.tv streams, and costing $10 each ($2.50 of which goes to the prize pool), that didn’t stop sales much with the 2013 event hitting an eye-popping $2,874,402 USD.

Still, I’m not even sure Valve realized just how big The International 4 would get for 2014. After just ten days of the compendium being offered on the market, the TI4 prize pool is already close to $6 million ($1.6 million was the base prize pool), and the event isn’t even set to officially start until July 8th! Eleven teams received an invite based on past year’s tournament performances, and regional qualifiers are ongoing to determine which four teams are the best in their respective regions. The final 16th slot for TI4 will be reserved for the underdogs that win the loser’s bracket, which itself is populated by teams that place second in the regional qualifiers.

Similar to last year’s event, compendiums are $10 with $2.50 of that going to the prize pool, but as mentioned, they are not required to enjoy the event via live streaming inside nor outside the game client. Compendium owners do gain perks such as a high (stacking) battle-point booster, a courier, a player guidebook of sorts, and a quick reference of the 16 invited teams as they battle through the tournament. Also like last year, Valve added stretch goals where if the prize pool exceeds a certain threshold, compendium owners will gain additional perks. These range from cosmetic in-game eye candy, to additional couriers, courier styles, immortal level item drops, a HUD, a new soundtrack, loading screen art, and plenty more. The TI4 book started with 13 stretch goals, and a mere ten days after being offered all have now been reached.

One noteworthy difference between TI3 and TI4 is that Dota 2 currently sees a unique player count of 7.9 million players a month, something over double the number playing during TI3. It doesn’t take an understanding of algebra (which is good for me) to realize this means only a fraction of the currently active Dota 2 community has bought compendiums so far.

The main event isn’t due until mid-July but there are a few things we can surmise already. First, the prize pool will only continue to grow during the next eight weeks leading up to the event (which will be held at the Key Arena in Seattle Washington, by the way). Even so, Valve will undoubtedly add new stretch goals and rewards to the prize pool, which will certainly keep it growing. So while $6 million may sound impressive it is undoubtedly only a footnote in what is already guaranteed to be Valve’s largest International event in history. Or for that matter, possibly even the largest eSports event in history.