The Prize Pool for The International 2015 Has Set a New Record as the Largest in eSports History At Over $11 Million and Growing

On the evening of June 8th, the partially crowdfunded prize pool for The International 2015 became the largest for a single eSport event, exceeding the record set by the preceding event, The International 2014 which had a prize pool of $10,930,698. Each International tournament is funded with $1.6 million by Valve and ever since the 2013 event, 25% of each purchase of a DOTA 2 in-game item called the International Compendium as well as its accessories contributes to their respective tournament prize pools. The Compendium 2015 in-game item grants player rewards, challenges, and achievements and was released on the DOTA 2 store 35 days ago and with over 60 days remaining until The International 2015 main event starting on August 3rd at KeyArena Seattle, the payout has ample time to grow to a more staggering amount. At the time of this article’s writing, the prize pool was $11,124,320.

Each annual International tournament puts the best 16 DOTA 2 teams against each other with the main event being held in front of a large live audience that is also livestreamed to the internet. The large prize pool has always been a characteristic of these events and three DOTA 2 tournament events rank the highest amongst video game tournament prize pools. The first International held in 2011 was the first ever video game tournament to have a $1+ million prize pool at $1.6 million which saw Na’Vi win 1st place and $1 million. That event was sponsored entirely by Valve, the developers of DOTA 2 who used the publicity of the event to promote the game’s closed beta at the time. At the conclusion of last year’s International 2014, Team Newbee took the prestigious first place title and prize of $5,028,121, a 46% fraction of the nearly $11 million prize pool.

The chart above was taken from the DOTA 2 Prize Pool Tracker website. While slowing growth occurs and is expected, each spike that occurs is explained by the release of new bundled in-game cosmetics. The International Compendium 2015 has stretch goals up to $15 million with Valve promising to release the in-game rewards at each level to all Compendium owners.

For now, this competitive DOTA 2 milestone is being celebrated in large by the DOTA community and is a distraction from data-mined references to the DOTA 2 Source 2 release. That’s right! DOTA 2 is going to be the first game officially running on Source 2 and its going to happen soon as hinted by SteamDB and DOTABUFF. There’s a good possibility the matches at The International 2015 might be played on the sparkling new engine. Previously, the public alpha release of the DOTA 2 Workshop Tools contained references to Source 2 in its code.