The Dota2 competitive scene will be in for an overhaul in the upcoming season. Post the International Valve has announced sweeping changes to the way Majors and minors are held in Dota2.
The next year will see Valve sponsoring third party tournaments. There will be an entire circuit which will feature points from the third party events. These points will accumulate over time to decide the invites to the International and majors. It will be a systematic formation of events and Valve will play a crucial role in helping the third party tournament funding.
There will be two tiers of tournaments that we sponsor: Majors and Minors. Majors must have a minimum prize pool of $500k, and will receive an additional $500k towards the prize pool from us. Minors must have a minimum prize pool of $150k, and will receive an additional $150k towards their prize pool. In order to ensure a baseline level of competitiveness, and to support teams from different regions around the world, both Majors and Minors will be required to have at least one qualifier from each of the six primary regions (NA, SA, SEA, CN, EU, and CIS). In addition, Majors and Minors must have a LAN finals component to their tournament in order to accommodate teams from the different regions. We will directly manage the schedule of Majors and Minors to help avoid collisions during the year.
During 2016-17, Dota2 has seen a standard decline in the number and prize pool of third party tournaments. Most of the tournaments have been focussed around the Majors and the minor system by Valve. Till date, Valve has been the organiser of these majors and minors; but following this announcement there will be greater involvement by third party tournaments. This will be somewhat similar to that of CSGO, where we see third party organisers such as PGL, ESL & FaceIt organising tournaments for the Game publisher.
