The dark side of the new TI default prize pool

Valve decided to change the TI rules in recent weeks, revealing that it no longer intends to release one large Battle Pass ahead of The International. The focus will shift from creating skins to developing long-lasting and more impactful in-game content. Or at least, that’s the plan that was communicated to the community.

The only problem, of course, is that without a Battle Pass, the prize pool of The International might be much lower than it used to be. Historically, TI has had the biggest prize pools in all of esports, the maximum being reached in 2021, at The International 10, which offered $40 million.

Dota 2’s The International prize pool is now 40 million dollars, just an insane number for an esports event

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 9, 2020

The new TI strategy

The Dota 2 community has been told by Valve that something will replace the Battle Pass and that the TI prize pool will continue to benefit from a percentage of the sales of whatever is developed in its place. Furthermore, we were told that the new editions of The International will have a starting prize pool of around $3 million instead of the usual $1.6 million.

This second announcement is a bit worrying. If Valve expects its new strategy to generate a lot of money, why does the company feel the need to boost the TI prize pool?

When you’re confident that you can raise at least $50 million and know that your world championship will likely have a prize pool of $15 million or more, there’s no need for such measures to be taken months before the start of the show.

But that’s exactly the problem: Valve probably knows from its CS:GO, Dota 2, and Team Fortress experience that people tend not to mind paying large amounts of money for skins.

But if they need to pay for other types of content, which don’t necessarily incentivize people to play in order to earn epic rewards, the community might not be that eager to buy the Battle Pass replacement.

From a financial standpoint, this strategy hurts Valve as much as it hurts the TI participants. In fact, it hurts the company a lot more because 75% of the money was going to Valve’s bank account anyway.

Although it’s hard to speculate what measures will be taken, and how the relationship between the company and its Dota 2 community will change as a result, it’s clear that the best days are likely behind us.

Dota 2 is still being played by more than 400.000 average concurrent players. But as we saw at the recent Bali Major, its professional tournaments are nowhere near the ones from five years ago.

Header: Valve Corporation