The International, the world’s largest Dota 2 championship tournament, commences on Friday with group stage play. This year the field would be competing for a $US1.6 million prize pool, but that’s been fattened by a million thanks to the sale of a virtual item to their fellow gamers, and the pot may increase.
The Dota 2 Interactive Compendium, which has been on sale for almost three months, allows fans to make predictions for the tournament and create fantasy teams within the game. Additionally, $US2.50 of each sale (the thing costs $US10) goes into the tournament’s prize pool. That pool just surpassed $US2.6 million.
Valve sweetened this with stretch-goal incentives, and six of the seven have been claimed so far. The latest gives a Compendium owner a new immortal item, in addition to five other perks unlocked up to now.
The last one is unlocked at $US3.2 million, which would double the original prize pool. About 435,000 Compendiums have been sold so far; another 204,000 would need to be sold in the final four or five days of the campaign to hit the last goal. But with this thing functioning as a kind of virtual tournament program, who knows, interest may indeed surge that much as The International draws near.
For those competing, first place will get at least a million, second $US250,000, and third $US150,000. How the prize pool bonus will be split has yet to be announced.
Dota 2 users contribute $US1 million to prize pool [Destructoid]
Comments
6 responses to “Dota 2 Players Add $1 Million To The International’s Prize Pool”
Thats an insane amount of money. Never would of thought gaming tournaments would be able to offer that much. Its a testament to the dedication of the fan base that they will contribute in that way to the prize pool as well.
People will happily go out and buy their favourite footy teams apparel, deck their house out with the team colours, purchase paid memberships, and dress up for the games, so its not too much of a stretch that us gamers will support our own.
I can feel a whole lot of late nights coming starting this weekend with the finals starting on games starting on Saturday 😀
Looking forward to it. Last year (and this year) we gather at a friends place, plug a laptop into the big screen and watch the tournament games through the client. It’s brilliant 🙂
Sounds like a ripper of a party
Well it would have, if they weren’t starting at 3am Perth time this year. Dammit. Ah well, Looks like we’ll do it the night after and just watch the replays (which brilliantly, also saves the different commentators)