For the seventh year straight, Dota 2 has broken their esports record

This time of the year, like in previous years, we’ve kept a close eye on the Dota 2 Battle Pass and its growing prize pool. This year, unfortunately, Dota 2 has been rather quiet and our attention has been focused elsewhere. That hasn’t stopped the prize pool from growing to a new record-breaking amount with just under 30 days to go until the International 7 kicks off, as 2016’s prize pool topped the previous year by over $2 million.

Many thought, myself included, that this year might be the first time that the prize pool remains similar or fails to meet the previous year (I was wrong). 2016’s prize pool stunned esports fans when it hit $20 million ($20,770,460),  while this year (with 30 days remaining) has seen the pot grow to $20,814,412 already.

Image via Wykrem Reddy

Dota 2 has always been about the fans, and year after year without question supporters of the game pour money into the prize pool for their favourite title. They are of course rewarded for their contributions with stretch goals in the compendium. The compendium is what makes this entire crowd-funding idea happen. Essentially a digital booklet which contains information pertaining to the competition that also allows fans to track their teams, players and each event as it unfolds. There are also daily quests and achievements for completing certain missions in the booklet, but the biggest draw is the levelling. You can buy levels for your compendium, and the more you buy the more loot you get. If you achieve the maximum amount of levels you get a replica of the trophy, the Aegis of the Immortal. This will cost you around R5000-R6000.

This will cost you around R5000-R6000.

Valve adds 25% of sales from the compendium to the prize pool, so you can imagine how much money has gone into it. The International is set to kick off on August 7 at the KeyArena in Seattle, and will run until August 12.

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Last Updated: July 13, 2017