A Brief History of Dota’s Esports Scene

Dota is a MOBA game with a rich and incredible history. In one form or another, people have been playing Dota since 2005, eight years before the official launch of Dota 2.

Back then, the esports industry was still in its infancy. Apart from StarCraft, Counter-Strike, and a few other games, nobody thought of competitive video games as something serious.

But as years went by and the MOBA community was starting to grow, some people started to realize that one day, Dota would be something big. And they were right.

Dota’s Not so Humble Beginnings

To skip a complicated history that preceded Valve’s decision to bring IceFrog on board with the objective of creating a stand-alone game called Dota 2, this game’s esports scene started to grow around the year 2010. But its first epic tournament took place in 2011. It was called The International and it broke the prize pool record by a lot.

This got everyone’s attention and the game’s community started to grow at a rapid pace, reaching around 13 million people just five years later.

The International 11 offered $1.6 million in prize money in a world in which $100.000 tournaments were considered to be a God-sent. The winning team was going to receive $1 million.

Valve did this because they were forced by their direct competitor, Riot Games, who had launched League of Legends, the other sequel to the famous Warcraft 3 mod called DotA, in 2009. Riot had the first-mover advantage and something needed to be done.

Back then, Riot was barely starting to develop LoL’s professional scene and the prizes were small. To make headlines and advertise its game, Valve decided to blow everything out of proportion. Instead of organizing a $250.000 event, which would have been enough, the company decided to offer a much larger amount of money.

The strategy worked. In the process, Natus Vincere and some of their players became famous. To this day, Danil “Dendi” Ishutin has remained a popular competitor, despite the fact that the last 10 years of his career have been disappointing.

Another player whose name has remained imprinted in everyone’s mind is Clement “Puppey” Ivanov. He went on to achieve genuine greatness by leading his own team, called Team Secret, to numerous Major victories and even a TI Grand Final in 2022.

The History of The International

After the first edition of The International, which took place in Cologne, Germany, Valve decided to organize one Dota 2 world championship each year.

Initially, the prize pool remained the same ($1.6 million), so Invictus Gaming also got “just” $1 million for winning the 2012 edition, which took place in Seattle. Their opponent was Natus Vincere, who played in the Grand Final of the first three editions before starting to collapse into irrelevancy.

The International 2013

The 2013 edition of The International was won by Alliance, a team that was not only hungry to win. They also had a unique way of playing, which came to be known as rat Dota. The tactics they used relied on dividing their opponents’ forces and pushing all three lanes simultaneously, often using heroes like Nature’s Prophet.

The International 2013 had a prize pool of $2.87 million, which was more than $1 million above the traditional amount. This was made possible by a brilliant marketing move made by Valve.

The company offered the Dota 2 community the chance to purchase something called the Compendium at the time, something that we know call the Battle Pass. This was essentially a DLC that offered some interesting in-game content. Of course, it was sold to the players, and 25% of the proceeds were added to the TI prize pool.

This method of increasing the tournament’s prizes, combined with the exceptional and ever-increasing quality of the Battle Pass, quickly resulted in prize pool records being shattered year after year.

The International 2014

In 2014, The International had a prize pool of almost $11 million, which was completely off-the-charts for those times. Even today, around a decade later, $11 million is still a formidable amount that doesn’t get offered even at the most spectacular tournaments in most esports.

To put things in perspective, CS:GO Majors offer around $1 million in prize money. When an esports tournament offers more than $1 million, it is regarded as being huge in just about any esport.

TI4 was won by Newbee, a team that has since disappeared from the game’s professional scene after a huge match-fixing scandal. Its last participation at The International happened in 2019. After that, a permanent ban followed.

The International 2014 had one of the least exciting Grand Finals in TI history. Just four games were played, and all of them were stomps. The first one lasted 25 minutes, the next one 26, the third was over in 17 minutes, while the fourth needed just 15 minutes to conclude.

Needless to say, the audience was disappointed but also amazed by Newbee’s prowess. Their opponent was Vici Gaming. This was the first and only time in TI history when two Chinese teams met in the Grand Final.

The International 2015

In 2015, the Dota 2 community was even more generous than in 2014 and nearly doubled the TI prize pool again. The final amount was $18.4 million, which was spectacular and essentially made every player of Evil Geniuses a millionaire.

EG won this tournament thanks not only to the formidable leadership of Peter “ppd” Dager, who has since retired from the game, but also thanks to the incredible talent of Sumail “Sumail” Hassan, the team’s midlaner at the time.

Sumail was only 16 years old and his performances inspired an entire generation of Dota 2 players. After seeing him playing heroes like Storm Spirit, everyone wanted to be the impactful midlaner who ends up shining even brighter than the carry.

Evil Geniuses won the tournament by defeating one of the event’s dark horses, CDEC, and received $6.6 million for their achievement.

The International 2016

In 2016, The International had another spectacular edition, one in which the strongest team in China and a dark horse met in the Grand Final. The Chinese team was Wings Gaming and the underdog was Digital Chaos. OG were expected to win that year but they ended up finishing 9th-12th.

This was another great tournament for Evil Geniuses, who finished in 3rd place, as well as Fnatic, who got their best placement ever at the competition: 4th place. The total prize pool was $20.7 million. The winning team received more than $9 million.

This season marked the peak of Dota 2. In February 2016, the game registered 709.000 average concurrent players and its community had around 13 million members. Since then, Dota 2’s community has declined significantly, reaching around 7-8 million. But the game itself has gotten significantly better.

The International 2017

TI7 offered $24.7 million in prize money, which was another record at the time, and marked Team Liquid’s best season to date. Back then, the organization had players like Kuro “KuroKy” Takhasomi and Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi, who was regarded as the best player in the history of the game.

His performance on heroes like Invoker, Anti-Mage and many more was truly a sight to behold. Nobody moved as he did. Even now, many years later, we still don’t have Invoker players that can do what he did that year.

Liquid played against Newbee in the Grand Final and won without losing a single game. It was a clean 3-0 and the games were relatively short: 27 minutes, 34 minutes, and 45 minutes. In every single case, the difference was made by Miracle- and, of course, KuroKy’s excellent decisions.

Liquid received $10.8 million for their victory. Back in those days, Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen was still competing and was part of the team. He ended up retiring in 2022, as a Team Liquid member, at the age of just 27. His total career winnings are close to $5 million just from tournaments.

The International 2018

This season offered the Dota 2 community the most beautiful Cinderella story in all of esports. OG struggled the entire year and ended up losing two key players shortly before the qualifiers for The International: Tal “Fly” Aizik and Gustav “s4” Magnusson. Both of them left to join Evil Geniuses after many months of failures.

OG had to improvise and they managed to find two players who have since become legends in the Dota 2 community: Anathan “ana” Pham, who had played for OG before, and Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen, who was a complete unknown at the time.

OG entered the tournament as the 18th-ranked team in the eyes of the pundits. And they ended up winning with a series of spectacular performances.

To this day, the TI8 True Sight film that was made by Valve based on the Grand Final of the tournament, brings Dota 2 players to tears. It has more than 14 million views on YouTube and is worthy of an Oscar.

OG received $11.2 million of the $25.5 million prize pool for their victory against PSG.LGD and the Grand Final score was 3-2.

There’s a lot of history surrounding their performance and what they had to do to qualify for the tournament. Nothing can do it justice but watching the TI8 True Sight will give you an idea of what was happening at the time.

One thing that’s worth mentioning about this Dota 2 year is that it was the first time when Valve decided to create a more rigorous and transparent structure for the game’s professional scene. It was called the Dota Pro Circuit and the name has remained to this day. The rules, on the other hand, have changed significantly.

The International 2019

This year marked OG’s second TI victory. They became the first team in the history of Dota 2 two win TI twice and what’s more impressive is that hey did it back-to-back. Once again, the regular season looked bad for the team. But when it was time to prove who’s king, OG brought back ana and won in spectacular fashion.

Their Grand Final opponent was Team Liquid. The match needed four games to conclude and Liquid didn’t stand a chance, despite winning game 1 with a Meepo against a Spectre. The prize pool of the tournament was $34.3 million. OG received $15.6 million, which was an absolutely enormous amount.

The International 2021

In 2020, The International had to be canceled because of the Covid situation, so the next edition of the tournament took place in 2021. One consequence of the cancellation was that TI10 had a massive prize pool.

Valve essentially released two Battle Passes for the tournament and the total amount that was raised surpassed $40 million.

The International 2021 was won by Team Spirit after a thrilling Grand Final played against PSG.LGD. The score went from 2-0 in favor of Spirit to 2-2 and then 3-2. The winning team received $18.2 million, which is more than enough to retire from the game and just enjoy life. But Team Spirit’s players continued to play.

The International 2022

TI11 was one of the most underwhelming editions of The International. Its prize pool was just $18.9 million. This was caused by Valve’s decision to split the Battle Pass into two parts. The community felt cheated and got a bit angry, which is why far fewer people decided to make the investment.

The tournament itself was fun to watch, especially for Western Europeans. The top three teams were from this region and Team Secret played in the Grand Final. Unfortunately for them, Tundra Esports had destroyed everyone on their way to the Grand Final and Secret simply could not counter their play style.

The score was 3-0 in Tundra’s favor. This was the second time in TI history that the Grand Final was a one-sided match.

Tundra got $8.5 million for winning the Aegis of Champions and everyone on the team became famous. Although, to be fair, many of the players were already well-known in the Dota 2 community.

A Brief History of Dota 2 Majors

Apart from TI, Majors have also played a huge part in Dota 2’s history. Arguably, the first Dota Major in the history of this esport was Dota 2 Asia Championships 2015. Its prize pool was $3 million and the team that won was Evil Geniuses.

This was Sumail’s first important event and his performance was comparable to that of Lionel Messi when he started playing for FC Barcelona. Everyone was amazed by what he was able to do.

Right after the end of TI5, Valve decided to start organizing a series of $3 million Majors. There were six of them in total. The first one was called The Frankfurt Major. It took place in 2015 and marked OG’s rise to fame.

Then came The Shanghai Major in February 2016, which was won by Team Secret. This tournament was followed by The Manila Major (OG), The Boston Major (OG), and The Kiev Major (OG).

As you can see, OG won quite a few Dota Majors before finally winning The International. The strange thing is that they won Majors in seasons in which their TI performance was bad. And then they won The International in two seasons in which their regular season was a disaster.

Starting with the year 2017, the competitive format of Dota 2 Majors changed. After that point, Majors became far less prestigious and offered just $1 million in prizes instead of $3 million.

Later, they were further downgraded to $500.000 prize pools. This was done in part because the game lost a lot of players and its tournaments were watched by fewer people.

The big sponsors also decided to leave the game for the most part, giving Valve two options: to sponsor the tournaments itself or to accept a serious downgrade of Dota 2’s professional scene for an indefinite amount of time. The second option was chosen.

The Dota Pro Circuit

Starting in 2018, Valve created what is now known as the Dota Pro Circuit. Before the creation of this competitive structure, Valve used to invite teams to The International based on its undisclosed ranking system. This made things unnecessarily unclear, which angered some people.

In every important sport, a meritocratic system is used and transparency is a key characteristic of that system. The same method was needed for Dota 2. And Valve implemented it to the best of its ability. Of course, mistakes were made, and the first two seasons were overwhelming for the players.

Dozens of big events were happening and everyone became numb after a while. Players were no longer feeling the importance of each $1 million event because there were too many of them. Viewers were no longer excited to watch the action because the same thing was happening every few weeks.

Valve quickly learned that regional leagues are needed, with fewer international tournaments being played. The system kept evolving until the 3-Tours per season format was reached.

Each Tour consists of a series of matches played in each of the six official regions:

• Western Europe
• Eastern Europe
• North America
• South America
• China
• Southeast Asia

In each region, there are two divisions. The best teams from Division I go to the Major that takes place after the end of the Tour. The worst two teams from Division I get relegated to Division II. The top two teams from Division II get promoted to Division I.

At the end of the regular season, the top 12 teams get direct invitations to The International. Around 6-8 more teams are allowed to qualify for the event via regional qualifiers. The points that are used to determine the 12 directly invited teams are offered in each regional league and in each international Major.

Header: Valve Corporation