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Preparations for the Dota 2 The International 5 have already begun

• Egon Kilin
• January 7th, 2015

Eager for the upcoming The International 5 Dota 2 tournament? Apparently so is Valve. Just moments ago, the company announced that preparations for one of the biggest gaming events of the year are already under way. Details are a bit scarce at this time, but Valve was able to reveal that this year the main event will feature 16 of the best Dota 2 teams in the world, which will battle for money and fame across six consecutive days. The International 5 will again take place in Seattle, Washington, just like last year’s TI4. However, the date has been pushed back a bit, with the highly anticipated tournament now running from Monday August 3rd until Saturday August 8th.

Valve also revealed that ticket availability will be announced in a blog post shortly after going on sale. Finally, the top Dota 2 teams at the moment can look forward to receiving an invitation to The International 5 shortly after May 1st. That’s pretty much all that was revealed so far, but it’s more than enough to get many of us hyped for the upcoming competition. I suspect that speculations regarding the possible prize pool are bound to begin any day now following this announcement. The International 4 set a new record not only for Dota 2, but also for the eSports industry as a whole when the prize pool reached the absolutely staggering sum of almost $11 million. Can The International 5 hope to surpass that amount? It seems a bit unlikely, but then again, that’s what people said last year as well.

Meanwhile, Dota 2 continues to grow at a steady rate and managed to start the new year on the right foot. Specifically, the counter provided by Valve shows that the game now has more than 10 million unique monthly players. Those are certainly impressive numbers considering that Dota 2 is seen as being one of the most challenging and rage-inducing competitive titles around.