In the past few days, the competitive Dota 2 community took a massive hit as the season’s ultimate event has been indefinitely postponed to a later date which is yet to be confirmed. While this may be viewed as a sad piece of news affecting solely Dota 2, it should be viewed as an effect on the entire esports industry as it’s an established fact that The International pushes the limits of esports every year in all aspects of viewership, prize pool and grasp over the community. Read on to learn more!
The following is the statement straight from Valve’s update as posted on the Dota 2 blog viewable here: http://blog.dota2.com/2020/04/the-international-2/:
After extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19, we have made the difficult choice to delay The International. We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021.
Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, trajectory, and global travel policies, we don’t expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future. In the meantime, we are working on restructuring the DPC season for the fall, and will be providing more information as soon as we have it.
The remainder of the statement goes on to state that 25% of Battle Pass sales will contribute to the notorious prize pool. Last year, The International 2019 pulled together a peak viewership of 2 million views, with 89 million hours watched and a record-breaking prize pool of $34,308,060. All of these numbers were set to be broken with this year’s iteration of The International.
However, would The International be the same if were held online? Would it be worth the compromise? This are the questions Valve has set onto the community – although it may be saddening to see the event not take place at its original date, it is far from cancelled. Luckily, the Dota Pro Circuit will return to fill up the empty space.
With no confirmed date in sight, we’ll keep a watchful eye on any updates for the event.
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