It looks like the dreaded news many in the Dota 2 community hope wouldn’t happen has finally been confirmed. Valve announced that The International 2020 is going to be delayed. While they continue to explore possibilities, it appears that T10 is going to get pushed to next year.
In a statement, Valve said that the decision was made “after extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19.” Valve added that considerations included the highly volatile landscape given local gathering restrictions, global travel policies, and of course, the virus trajectory. Valve did reveal that they “are working on restructuring the DPC season for the fall, and will be proving more information as soon as we have it.”
Like with the previous tournaments, the prize pool for TI10 was to be funded by 25% of the sales of the upcoming Battle Pass. There is a bit of good news, as this Battle Pass is going to be released sooner rather than the usual schedule of being closer to TI. Valve did say that with their “team working from home and things taking longer to complete, the release date of the Battle Pass will be at least a couple of weeks later than usual.” That means it should be around the last quarter of the year.
Valve ended their announcement by saying that they hope everyone in the community remains safe and that they “look forward to a time when we can once again welcome everyone to enjoy the spectacle of The International.”
While this is indeed big news for the Dota 2 community, it’s something that isn’t really a surprise. When the health crisis started, the first victim was the ESL One Los Angeles 2020. It was initially postponed, but later on became an online-only event. You can read more about that here.
However, after that Valve also cancelled the fourth Major, which was the Dota 2 EPICENTER Major. Learn more about that here.
Thus, there was some expectation that T10 would be delayed and it was more of a question of when rather than if. The question that’s probably on some people's minds now is what’s going to happen to the teams in the DPC rankings. Before all of this, TNC Predator was sitting at the top, just slightly ahead of Vici Gaming. Other teams in the top 10 include Team Secret, Evil Geniuses, Invictus Gaming, Alliance, Team Liquid, business associates, beastcoast, and Team Aster. There is no word from Valve yet on any action on this matter.
Even if Valve does cancel its events, many third-party organizers have continued to hold online tournaments. Hopefully this will be enough to maintain the interest of many until TI10 actually happens.
