It all comes down to the disappointing compendium 2023.
Image credit: Valve, Dota 2
On September 28, Valve released the compendium for The International 2023 in Dota 2 where the company decided to forego the annual "Battle Pass" with hero skins. Instead, the developers introduced other rewards, including replica champions' aegis, allowing players to display their achievements, chat wheel phrases, enabling players to communicate in style during intense matches, team and player sticker capsules, letting fans show support for their favorite teams and players, teleportation effects, adding a touch of flair to each match, and two treasure chests with loading screens.
Image credit: Valve, Dota 2
However, Valve's decision to omit traditional hero skins in honor of The International 2023 in Dota 2 was met with criticism from the game's community. Many players expressed disappointment as Valve did not provide the usual array of hero cosmetics associated with the TI compendium. This choice seemingly had an impact on sales, as reflected in the statistics from the Prize Pool Tracker, which indicated a lack of significant purchases of the compendium.
At the time of writing, the prize pool for The International 2023 amounted to $2,4 million, marking the lowest figure since 2015.
The entire situation has left professional players in shock, as they may find themselves disappointed with the prize pool for the tournament finals, which has only managed to exceed the $2.4 million threshold at this stage.
Here are some comments found on Reddit about the whole situation. Some people think that the prize pool for The International 2023 will hardly reach $5 million.
The initial prize pool for The International 2023 amounted to $1,6 million, contributed by Valve. The company will subsequently add 25% of the sales from all Dota 2 compendiums purchased by fans to the prize pool.
Some more news on Dota 2, in August, Valve surprised Dota 2 players with the big Summer Client Update, a patch that introduces numerous quality-of-life enhancements. This update includes impressive visual enhancements, a revamped behavior and reporting system, and a vastly improved user interface for the armor inventory. If you want to learn more, follow the link.
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