Dota 2 News

We're excited to release the International Compendium for The International 2023. Because this is a new shape to previous years’ Compendiums, we wanted to walk you through what it is, how it works, and why we built it.

As we described a few months back, looking at Dota's history made it clear that Battle Passes had steadily grown to consume all the content in a given year, and were inhibiting our ability to ship creative things throughout the year. We wanted to fix this, and so made a deliberate choice several months ago to ship new things more often in a wider variety of forms. This year has been full of experiments: We released a brand new player behavior system, free items to celebrate the 10th Anniversary, a number of gameplay patches, a collection of community sets, and more. This Compendium is another example of something new.

[h3]Event-Focused Features, Event-Focused Rewards[/h3]

Every Dota update has a variety of goals and part of the work of designing and building an update is choosing where to put the emphasis. An update can be focused on delivering cosmetic content or refining balance. An update can try to generate the largest prize pool possible. Instead of these goals, we chose to focus this update more narrowly: To elevate the players, the teams, and the artistry that is high-level Dota played at The International. We focused entirely on creating a set of activities to make TI more fun while games were going on, and another set of activities to make TI more fun when games weren't going on.

And so that's what this year's Compendium is: a collection of challenges that we've built around the pro players and the event itself. We've brought back and improved some old favorites like Fantasy and Predictions. We're also introducing some new activities, ranging from the light-hearted (Bingo) to the seriously formidable (The Road to the International Challenge).

Everything you'll accomplish through the Compendium earns you progress towards rewards. Like the Compendium challenges, all the rewards this year are built around the players and the event. There's an International 2023 HUD, permanent chatwheel lines, and a physical collector's Aegis, along with lots of new content for your Profile Showcase (see below), including team and player stickers.

[h3]Something For Everyone[/h3]

In line with the goals we established earlier this year, we've been intentional about ensuring that every update we ship has something for all Dota players, whether that's new gameplay or new features. This update is no different: If, like many, you're a huge fan of watching the spectacle of the International but aren't familiar with the old legends of Arteezy on a cliff, or Emo's research into the deep lore and many varied uses of the question mark, that's alright, too — we've got stuff in this update for you as well.

This update also includes the Profile Showcase, free and available now to all players. Whether you're proud of your record, your in-game fashion sense, or that one time you won a game on Invoker, we've created a canvas where you can show off the parts of your Dota experience you value the most. We could describe how cool it is all day, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, we've put together a whole update page: go take a look at the pictures.

[h3]Onward[/h3]

We're already working on future updates with different focuses and we know you're excited to learn more about the next big patch, and the next set of arcanas, and everything else we're working on — but that's for after the champions claim the Aegis. For now, Seattle welcomes a return of the finest players in the world, and we can't wait. We'll see you on the Road to the International.

Invitations have been sent, plane tickets have been reserved, and our old friends the soundproof booths are undergoing their final maintenance and inspections: In just a few short weeks the first teams arrive in Seattle for The International.

Most of the tickets have been sold: Tickets for the Road to the International (Oct 20-22) are completely sold out, and only about a thousand remain for The International (Oct 27-29).

As TI approaches, we have a couple announcements (and reminders of past announcements):

• Pubstomps: For as long as there have been Dota tournaments, there have been Dota pubstomps: opportunities to gather with friends and fans and watch together. This year, for the first time, we're planning on including some of the pubstomps from around the world live in the TI broadcast. We'll be back closer to the event to talk more about how this will work and ask interested pubstomps to register.
  
  
• Short Film Contest: We had a record number of entries this year. We've narrowed the ninety submitted films down to about twenty that will be available for viewing and voting in the client from 9/29 through 10/9. The top ten entries selected by the community will be shown during The International, where we'll also announce the overall winners.
  
  
• Cosplay Contest: Sign-ups for this year's cosplay contest are open until midnight CST on Sunday, 10/1. SteelSeries is sponsoring this year's contest, so in addition to $20,000 USD of cash prizes, winners also get a variety of SteelSeries gear. (And, as a reminder, you don't need to be a ticket holder to enter: If you're selected as a top-ten finalist, you automatically get three-day passes for yourself and one guest.)
  

For those of you joining us: We can't wait to welcome you to the Seattle Convention Center's Summit Building and Climate Pledge Arena as we once again follow the best Dota team in the world on their path to the Aegis. For everyone who'll be following along from home, we're looking forward to releasing the new International Compendium next week.

Between emoji-encoded patch notes, our 10-Year Anniversary celebration, and massive updates to Dota's Armory and behavior system — and of course The International rapidly approaching — there's a lot happening both in and out of the lanes. Plus, we're already hard at work on more updates to come, which means we're thinking about new community treasures to help fill out that aforementioned Armory.

To that end, the Dota team would like to invite all workshop contributors to dream up some new sets for any of your favorite heroes. Submissions are already open, and we're looking forward to seeing your full craft on display. This round of submissions also welcomes designs for Muerta, Crystal Maiden's Conduit of the Blueheart Persona and the Exile Unveiled Phantom Assassin Persona, which are all now included in the workshop.

We request that all submissions be on the Dota 2 Workshop by the end of the day on November 26th, 2023 PDT. Please make sure to mark your work with the "Fall 2023" tag when tendering items to the Workshop to ensure they aren't overlooked. Please note that any unreleased "Spring 2023" submissions already on the workshop will also be considered for this round of selections.

As always, please avoid concepts involving human skulls, blood, and gore. We'd like to remind all Dota fans to regularly visit the Workshop and vote through the Queue to ensure your voices are heard in the polling process.

We started the Dota Pro Circuit in 2017 to answer a question that was coming up more and more frequently: How do you earn an invite to The International? Up until then, invitations were driven by a handful of regional qualifiers and “golden ticket” invites from Valve. Distribution of these invitations created an exciting moment every year for fans, but it was hard for pro players (and their fans) to know the exact path to The International. Understanding that every invitation system has trade-offs, we set out to create a system with more clarity and transparency.

When it came to that one limited goal, we succeeded. The DPC demystified the invitation criteria, and made it easier for pros to understand their path to The International. Unfortunately, the DPC brought with it a set of rules and regulations, and those have come with a cost that’s become clearer to us over time: The world of competitive Dota has grown less exciting, less varied, and ultimately much less fun.

By existing as the only official league, the DPC has a stranglehold on the event calendar for the year and what it's filled with. Event organizers are innovating less, because that's effectively what we've been asking them to do: Instead of competing for viewers and players by producing compelling and inventive tournaments, organizers now compete for compliance with Valve’s long list of rigid requirements (team count, broadcast languages, event format, and more).

Relaxing those requirements doesn't help. No matter how well-intentioned our event specifications, or the actions of the event organizers in meeting them, it distracts from what the goals of these events used to be: showcasing Dota in the most entertaining way possible, enticing players to participate and the audience to watch. The best world is the one where event organizers aren’t competing for our attention, but for yours.

Before we introduced these constraints, the world of competitive Dota was healthier, more robust and more varied than the one we have now. Events used to be less rote and more creative, and there was more room in the calendar for them. Everything was open for exploration: event length and themed venues and team participation and even the basic assumptions of tournament design. There was a beautiful unregulated insanity to it all — casual house parties and oyster prize pools coexisted alongside the Dota Asia Championships and one-off invitationals. It would be too simplistic to say that the slow drift of the Dota competitive scene away from this focus on fun and creativity towards the sterile, near-monoculture of today is entirely the fault of the DPC, but the DPC has generated significant pressure and incentives that led us here. The Dota community has decades of grassroots experience coming up with innovative and entertaining events, and right now the DPC is getting in the way.

With that in mind, we're ending the Dota Pro Circuit: 2023 will be the final DPC season.

Competitive Dota predates the DPC by many years and will continue long after. The International will continue as well — we're already working on The International 2024, and next year we'll be talking more about how invitations to that event will work. But for now, we're going to return our focus to this year's event — which, unbelievably, is only four short weeks away.