Valve's DotA 2 International competition has once again broken the record for the largest Esport prize pool in history, breaking last year's numbers by a significant margin several weeks ahead of the big world championship matchups. At the time of writing the total sits at just over 20.8 million, meaning the top few teams at this year's International are going to walk away with a lot of money.
As usual, Valve gave fans who purchased a Compendium, a lot of stuff with this year's International build up. There are the usual cool items and courier skins, along with a single player campaign, new animations, new sound effects, arena lighting changes and chat wheel sounds.
All of that encouraged hundreds of thousands fo DotA 2 players to throw a few dollars Valve's way in order to be a part of the build up and to contribute to the International's monumental prize pool. Only 25 percent of the money went to that of course, so Valve has raked in at least $60 million from this annual event. Sure it had to pay its developers many man hours to produce all of that extra content, but we doubt it will have cost it that much.
With more than 30 days left to go, it seems clear that the prize pool will top $21 million, though how far beyond that it goes remains to be seen. The 2017 fundraising will last longer than the 2016 and 2014 runs, though not quite as long as the 2015 International build up.
How far do you think it will go?
