The big event in Dota 2 e-sports has always been Valve’s The International. In 2015, Valve introduced a way to get exclusive cosmetics and contribute their money towards TI’s million-dollar prize pool. While Valve always puts down $1.6 million for the prizes, a share of Battle Pass purchases does the rest: That figure has reached over $25 million.
The Dota 2 Prize Pool Tracker has the numbers: The 2018 Battle Pass contributions weighed in at $25,532,177 by the end of its offering. These passes are offered for about 110 days total and the 2019 Battle Pass has surpassed the previous year in only 55 days.
Dota 2 has only gotten bigger in following with a healthy e-sports scene and content cadence. It’s important to remember that Valve has been interested in Dota as a franchise: In November of last year they formally released Artifact, the Dota card game. The launch and monetization model of the game was so problematic that Valve has been quiet about the future of the game while they go back to basics. “Towards A Better Artifact” was the last Artifact blog post this past March.
Things are looking up though: Dota Underlords is an official take on Dota Auto Chess and the game quickly caught fire as a PC and Mobile game with an addictive format. Compare Artiact’s 60k player peak to Underlords’ 202k peak according to Steamcharts. Given that game was briefly only available to Dota Battle Pass buyers, you can imagine the spike in purchases.The future of Dota as a franchise is looking up very quickly.
