recently video game companies are on a roll not only in number of players and revenues produced by video games but also by the number of tournaments and its humongous cash prizes being given to the players joining these tournaments. amounting to more than millions of dollars, these tournaments are getting attention from all over the world. some games like League of Legends, CS GO and call of duty boasts big cash prizes for the winners. but nothing will be big as the DOTA 2 specifically a DOTA 2 tournament called "The International"
The international, or TI as we call it in the Dota 2 community, is the biggest E-Sports(Electronic Sports) tournament in the world. teams all over the world battle it out to become the winner and take home a big chunk of the prize pool. This is an event held yearly by Valve, the game's developer and is recognized by the gaming community as one of the biggest and grandest in all of e-sports industry.
Ti is held during august and it started way back in 2011 and is still continuing to get bigger as the years pass by. it started with a $1.6m prize pool at TI1 and last years TI6 has been the biggest not only in the dota 2 scene but in all of E-sports , boasting a prize pool of $20,770,460!!!
so how does this prize pool become this big? Initially Valve will put a starting prize pool of $1.6 million and its up to the community to make it bigger by buying a "Battle pass"/ "Compendium"
This right here is my battle pass
Battle pass or Compendium is a tournament pass that features different in-game items exclusive only to those who have this pass. the number of items you can get varies depending on what level your battle pass is. The higher the level the more items you can get. Within this items you can get a treasure wherein once opened u have a chance to get a rare or an ultra rare item which would sell in the real world for about $20 - $30 or higher depending on the items you get. This items can be equipped to a hero for additional effect on their skills and of course amazing designs and effect on their looks.
A set of items you can get while opening a treasure, one item per treasure opened
Regarding gaining levels, there are 2 ways to do it. one is to keep playing and completing quests in game to get levels or you can buy out those levels. Battle pass are available for $10 if u want to start at lvl 1 or you can buy it for $37 and start it at level 75
now of all battle pass sales, including battle pass level purchases, 25% of the total pruchases is added directly to the initial prize pool given by valve. Let me remind you that Dota 2 is being played in every corner of the world. the is the reason why this prize pool is so big is because many players around the world are buying the compendium. during the last 30 days Dota 2 peaked at almost 1 million players. just imagine if each of this players buy at least the 10$ battle pass that would immediately be 10 million dollars. this excludes the battle pass level purchases. imagine how bigger it would be if we would put in the Battle pass level purchases.
almost more than a month before the TI7 tournament the Prize pool is currently sitting at $19,680,260. seems like this year's prize pool will exceed last years total prize pool if this continues.
remember how your mom scolds you of playing computer games for hours? well that may change once they saw this. thank you for reading!