Valve has announced its intention to drop the use of its own Major tournaments for DotA 2 in the lead up to the International world championship starting in the 2017-2018 season. Moving forward, it will instead look to sponsor large third party tournaments, awarding points to teams that do well in each of them, who can in turn trade those points in for a spot at The International.
Over the past few years, Valve has run several 'Majors' which act as a filtering system for the best teams in the world to get their name on the docket to play on the grandest DotA 2 stage of them all. That takes a lot of organizing though and a lot of additional prize money. In the future, Valve wants to transfer some of that responsibility on to other groups.
Describing the process as more "organic" in this way, Valve has highlighted that there will be two tiers of tournaments starting next year. Minors will have a minimum prize pool of $150,000, to which Valve will contribute a further $150,000 of its own money. Major tournaments must have a minimum of $500,000 in prize money, which Valve will match with its own donation.
Tournaments both major and minor, must have a qualifying team from each primary gaming region -- NA, SA SEA, CN, EU and CIS (thanks P0CGamer). Valve itself will have a hand in scheduling tournaments, so organizers will need to remain in touch with it throughout the process of setting up the events.
Valve has confirmed that points will be twinned with teams and individual players, so if players transfer teams at specified times, they will take some of their points with them. It could be interesting to see if that affects certain teams making it to the International.
"Best of luck to the teams competing in August, and we look forward to the upcoming season once a champion is crowned," Valve said in a statement.
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