Dota 2 The International 2022 heads to Singapore in October

pcgamesn.com:

Valve’s biggest yearly Dota 2 competition is set to take place in October, with Dota 2 The International 2022 being hosted in Singapore. The location was all but confirmed over the past few days in a series of teasing photo shoots posted to the game’s official Twitter account, but we now have a date for what is likely to be the biggest esports tournament of the year, at least in terms of prize pool.

Dota 2’s annual The International tournament is the biggest of Valve’s Dota 2 ‘Majors’ and the culmination of the MOBA game’s yearly esports cycle. Last year’s tournament, which took place in Bucharest and was won by TSpirit, reached a record prize pool of just over $40 million USD. Racking up a cumulative 107.23 million hours watched, it was also the second most-watched esports event of last year behind LoL’s Worlds tournament.

The International’s vast winner’s prize has been trending upwards ever since the third tournament in 2013, where Valve began fundraising through its tournament-specific ‘TI battle pass’ sales, a percentage of which goes towards the total reward fund. This crowdfunding approach has seen TI holding the top six spots in the largest overall prize pools list for esports tournaments, with each consecutive year topping the one prior.

Dota 2’s Stockholm Major concluded this past weekend, with TI’s first back-to-back champions OG taking home the $200,000 prize for first place after defeating TSM in the grand final. The tournament was played on the recent Dota 2 7.31c patch, which nerfed Tiny and Primal Beast going into the Stockholm showdown.

Dota 2 hit its biggest peak player count in over a year and a half in January, showing that Valve’s follow-up to the ‘Defence of the Ancients’ Warcraft 3 mod is still