Maybe it’s time to consider a career in video games.
The International 4, a massive tournament held for players of Valve’s free-to-play game Dota 2, will sport a prize pool worth more than $10 million when it kicks off next month. The tournament, at KeyArena in Seattle, will offer the biggest payout in the history of eSports, the burgeoning field of competitive video games played in front of a crowd of cheering fans.
The game is played by two opposing teams, made up of 5 players. Each player controls a hero, with a particular set of special abilities and statistics, which they can augment by purchasing items and leveling up during the game. The first team to use their combined powers to destroy an Ancient at the heart of their enemies’ base wins.
The total payout will also exceed the prize purse of a number of major sporting events, including the Masters, the Tour de France and the Kentucky Derby.
Apart from the overall value, what sets this prize pool apart from other multi-million dollar eSports tournament purses is that much of it was funded by members of the Dota 2 community.
Valve kicked in $1.6 million to get the pool started, and then chipped in $2.50 for every time a player purchased the Compendium, an in-game item that costs $9.99 and offers a number of benefits to its owners, based on how much money the community pitches in towards The International’s prize pool. Players can also purchase points to upgrade their Compendium, and Valve contributed 25 percent of all those purchases to the pool as well.
The success of this funding model speaks well for both the health of Dota 2 as a game, as well as Valve’s application of the free-to-play business model. If the company is keeping 75 percent of the revenue that led to a prize pool of this size, the company could stand to make more than $25 million from hosting the tournament.
That doesn’t include all the other money that players may be spending on the game in addition to their compendium purchase. Valve has a number of items available for users to buy, including voice packs and character skins that can customize their experience.
