This weekend will see the final of this year’s biggest Dota 2 tournament with The International 2026, the 15th iteration of the esports event.
The lucrative and prestigious event will end this year with a prize pool of around $3.25 million in total as things stand.
That is almost $37m less than TI 2021 five years ago, which sported esports’ biggest-ever prize at just over $40m
While there is obviously additional context behind this, such a drastic decline in a relatively short period of time is still a worrying sign for the future of the game and the MOBA genre overall.
Dota 2 Has Created Esports’ Biggest Ever Prize Pools
Dota 2 holds eight of the 10 spots for the highest esports tournament prize pools ever. The top 7 are all iterations of Dota 2’s The International.
Back in 2013, Valve introduced a crowdfunding element to the TI tournaments with the release of the Compendium.
This was a purchasable in-game battle pass, which allowed fans to interact with the esports tournament by predicting matches, choosing their favourite teams, and completing community challenges for rewards.
The Compendium cost $10 and saw 25% of its profits go toward that year’s TI prize pool, on top of the $1.6m that Valve commits every year.
This revolutionised esports, with TI sporting record prize money growth year on year.
TI 2013 had $2.8m, then $10.9m in TI 2014, then over $18m in 2015 as Valve continued releasing more exclusive events tied into the tournaments.
This then led to the creation of the battle pass in 2016, a common sight in gaming now, but something fresh back then.
What then followed was three of biggest prize pools in esports history: $25m at TI 2018, $34m at TI 2019, and then the record $40 at TI 2021.
But since then, TI prize money has dropped even quicker than it grew.
And this is because Valve was unhappy with the amount of resources needed to make all the unique content for the battle passes.
Valve claimed the TI battle pass didn’t serve every player and the publisher instead refocused its efforts on upgrading the game overall.
So, in 2023, Valve stopped releasing Battle Passes for TI and brought the Compendium back instead, with much fewer in-game rewards.
What resulted was less than $2m generated for the prize pool that year and a total of just $3.3m for TI 2023.
And this year’s is currently at $3.25m, with Team Vision the 66% favourites to win on Polymarket.
Are MOBAs and Esports in Trouble?
Valve felt they needed to act this way to appease the wider playerbase and try to attract new players to the game.
According to Steam Charts, Dota 2 has not reached an average of over 1 million concurrent players since January 2017.
The game has stagnated since 2015 which is not uncommon for MOBAs. The genre is a dying breed.
Dota 2 has been out for over 13 years, the original Dota released back in 2003 as a custom community map for Warcraft III.
When was the last time a new traditional MOBA released and made a big splash? There’s a reason publishers have been combining MOBAs with other popular genres like battle royale SUPERVIVE and hero shooter Deadlock.
MOBAs are difficult to learn and take a lot of commitment to play well.
In the current economic climate where everyone is overworked and underpaid, an intense hour of withstanding teammate toxicity while trying to win a singular MOBA match isn’t always appealing on a weeknight.
It’s no coincidence that most people’s favourite time playing such games came during high school or university, when we all had more free time.
And the current younger generations might not be as interested in the slow overwhelming grind needed to learn such a game, understandably.
It’s why Riot Games has invested heavily in what some would call the ‘TikTokification’ of League of Legends, Dota’s biggest MOBA rival.
Adding things such as hypermobile champions with lots of dashes, WASD controls, and homeguards to get you back into lane faster after death were all to appease newer players with lower attention spans.
That’s also why Riot has released the slower-paced League of Legends Classic to continue to appeal to older players who miss their previous glory days.
MOBAs created the gaming industry we currently find ourselves in. Free-to-play live-service games with frequent updates and costly battle passes.
But, as every multiplayer game fights to keep players grinding their Battle Pass, gamers don’t have time for more than one game at a time. And lighter, faster-paced games are probably going to win that fight.
Are MOBAs a dying breed or have the struggles of the esports industry just dampened the mood? Share your thoughts with us on the Insider Gaming Discord.
Meanwhile, Cr1t- announced this year was probably his last TI following Team Falcons’ elimination. And for even more Insider Gaming delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.
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