In brief: After taking a year off due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dota 2's The International is coming back with the largest prize pool ever accumulated in esports history. With a sum of just over $40M, competitors will surely give all they have to win. The group stage will run between August 5-8th and the main event from August 10th to the 15th.
It's not every day we see such an enormous prize pool for an esports competition. Valued at $40,018,195, it's the largest esports prize pool for a single tournament we have ever witnessed.
The reason for the eye-boggling prize pool of over $40M seems to be because last year's $34,467,857 prize pool wasn't claimed, therefore, it was added to this year's tournament.
Because of the current pandemic the world is facing, Valve is still working out the details of The International 10 as the situation evolves. Whether the tournament will be public or if it will be a digital-only event, only time will tell. The company expects to share more information about the event in June.
Moreover, Valve introduced Supporters Club so fans can purchase bundles and show their devotion to their favorite teams. Each team has three bundles (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) with items created by them. Half of the bundle sales go to the team that created them. For now, there are 17 teams' bundles, but more should come soon. The bundles will be available until The International 10 begins.
In Valve's announcement, the studio also claimed it plans to add content to Dota 2 on a more regular basis, instead of dropping everything in a single go as it has done until now. The Diretide, New Player, and Dota Plus updates were the first experiments of the studio's new approach to content delivery.
In the coming months, instead of launching a massive summer event, Valve plans to launch two separate ones. The first one should come in mid-to-late June, while the other is expected to release after The International. The money gathered during these events won't be added to the Battle Pass prize pool.
https://www.techspot.com/news/89651-dota-2-international-10-scheduled-august-40m-prize.html
