Over the past few years, Valve has held an official DotA 2 tournament called The International. Last year the developers tried to raise money for a prize pool in which the proceeds would go to the winners, but at the same time by turning to crowdfunding, gamers could contribute to that pool and receive rewards in the process.
Last year’s The International saw close to $11 million being raised – $10,930,698 to be exact – but it looks like this year’s prize pool will put last year’s prize pool to shame. As it stands the current prize pool is sitting at $12,512,906 (at this time of writing). This is a huge leap from last month where it was at a little over $7 million.
Let’s not forget that the funding has not ended and with a couple of months left to go, we reckon it should have no problems blowing way past last year’s figures. In the meantime it looks like many of the stretch goals for The International have been met. The next stretch reward will consist of an announcer pack at $13,000,000, followed by new weather effects at $14,000,000, and the ultimate reward which is a special Axe Immortal & Longform comic at $15,000,000.
Like we said given that there’s plenty of time left, we have to wonder what kind of rewards Valve has planned should it cross the $15 million mark? In the meantime if you’d like to contribute to the prize pool, head on over to the DotA 2 website of the details.