The Dota 2 eSports event will have to wait until the current pandemic goes away
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has taken down one more eSports event, The International. An announcement was made by Valve and the Defense of the Ancients team, who confirmed the postponement, but without a new date yet. The annual esports world championship tournament for Dota 2 was scheduled for this summer, from August 18 through August 23 at the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, Sweden.
This championship series started back in 2011 when it took place in Cologne, Germany. Since then, the series has been hosted in other regions, and this year was the first time the championship was returning to a European country since it began. There is no guarantee that the event will be accommodated this year; most likely, it will have to wait until next year. “We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021,” Valve and the Defense of the Ancients team stated in a blog post. “Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, virus trajectory, and global travel policies, we don’t expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future.”
This is one of the most popular Dota 2 championships, last year it beat its record of total prize pool money for $34 million. This year’s edition was going to be the tournament’s tenth anniversary for the event with the largest prize pool among any other major eSports event. A total of 18 teams are invited to this event selected from both the results of the Dota Pro Circuit and a few qualified invitations to the regional winners from each region in the world.
