Valve’s The International Dota 2 Tournament Will Be Held In Southeast Asia For The First Time
The International (TI), Dota 2's annual tournament, will take place in Singapore this October. This will be the first time for the global esports competition to be held in a country in Southeast Asia. In the past, The International was held by Valve in the US, Canada, China, Germany, and Romania.
During the event, 16 invited professional Dota teams compete for the title of best Dota 2 team. A teaser for the upcoming event was revealed in a tweet that succinctly shared the location and competition date.
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The global tournament is notorious for its large monetary rewards. At last year's 10th annual championship, the winning team got a slice of the $40 million prize pool. That reward sum is crowdfunded early on by in-game purchases made by the Dota 2 community and has continued to increase gradually as years go by.
Winners of The International are also bestowed with the Aegis of Champions. It's a dedicated trophy forged out of bronze and silver by Weta Workshop. The reverse side of the trophy is annually engraved with the names and handles of each player on the winning team of The International.
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The very first The International event was held in Cologne, Germany, during the trade show Gamescom, as a way of revealing Dota 2 to worldwide audiences. It quickly attracted attention with its astonishing $1.6 million prize pool ($1 million for the champion).
In light of the risk of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 event in Stockholm, Sweden was postponed. The International was arranged to finally make a Swedish debut last year, but problems with Swedish authorities caused plans to drop again.
Instead, Valve moved the event to Bucharest, Romania but without a live audience due to spikes in COVID-19 cases. It's not clear yet what COVID-19 precautions Valve will be taking for this year's competition.