Dota 2 pros have mixed opinions on The International’s large prize pool being split to support other events

Dota 2 is the home of The International, which features the highest prize pools in esports. Every year fans get to crowdfund the most prestigious tournament in the Dota 2 calendar through the battle pass, and the winner almost takes half of it.

Given the tournament’s top-heavy prize pool distribution scheme, teams that don’t make it to the top four in the event usually disband or make roster changes, reducing the overall stability within the game’s competitive scene. Usually, the rest of the year is filled with Majors with mediocre prize pools compared to TI.

Fans and pros have been brainstorming how Valve can reallocate the crowdfunding for TI and use it to make Majors more appealing to players for years. One of the most recent opinions on the matter came from Team Spirit’s Mira in an interview with Escorenews.

“It would be so much better to split the TI prize pool,” Mira said. “Every team would have more motivation to compete throughout the year, and it would be more interesting to play in a big tournament every two-to-three months.

TI10 winner described the current state of the scene as “fighting for a piece of the bread,” an opinion shared by many other players.

Newly retired Dota 2 pro MATUMBAMAN expressed his desire to see the old Valve-backed Majors in a 2021 interview with Monster Energy. Unlike the tiny prize pools of the present-day Majors, the 2016-2017 Majors featured $3 million prize pools. This system treated the viewers with one of the most competitive Dota 2 years in the game’s history, but it was later scrapped for the DPC and third-party Majors.

Evil Geniuses’ legendary captain ppd also chimed in on OG’s Monkey Business Show, where the TI5 winner mentioned how the recent TI prize pools have been “too high.” 

Though a $40 million prize pool sounds like an amazing deal, it can lose its meaning when a decent majority of the competitive scene is fighting for scraps. Less than 100 players get to compete in each TI, which makes up a tiny percentage of the whole competitive scene.

The lazy use of the battle pass crowdfunding almost makes it impossible to get by as a tier two and even tier one Dota player since one mistake during the regular season can mean missing out on a payday.