With nearly $11 million in total prize money, Dota 2’s fourth “International” was one of the largest e-sports tournaments in the history of pro-gaming. Teams from all over the world came to Seattle’s Key Arena to battle it out for the first place prize of roughly $5 million. And at the end of the day, Team Newbee, hailing from China, claimed first place.
For the uninitiated, Dota 2 is a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game where one five-man team tries to destroy another five-man team’s base. Each player chooses a “hero” to control (each of whom has different strengths, weaknesses and abilities) and tries to work in conjunction with the rest of their team to beat their opponents and take out their enemy’s towers and buildings. With over 100 heroes to choose from, the game is incredibly hard to learn and master.
Despite it’s high learning curve, Dota 2 has only seemingly grown in popularity. How fast has the game grown? Last year, the International had a total prize pool $2,874,381 with $1,437,190 going to first place.
This year?
A total prize pool of $10,931,105 and $5,028,308 going to the first place team.
The tournament had garnered enough buzz that ESPN streamed the tournament on ESPN 3 and had a special broadcast on ESPN 2 to introduce Dota 2 to the non-gaming community.
Yes, stuff like this was streaming on ESPN, a real sports site that covers real sports:
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }
And it all culminated in today’s Grand Finals, where Team Newbee took on Team ViCi Gaming in a best-of-five series to decide who would walk away with over $5 million in prize money. While ViCi Gaming won the first game, Newbee stormed backed to win three straight in decisive fashion. Just like that, five pro-gamers from China became instant millionaires.
Newbee is actually a relatively new team which formed at the beginning of 2014. The team formed through a consolidation of some of the top players in country: Zhang “xiao8” Ning, Zhang “Mu” Pan, Chen “Hao” Zhihao, Wang “SanSheng” Zhaohui and Wang “Banana” Jiao. Kind of like the Miami Heat back in 2010, Newbee was commonly called the “Dream Team 2” as it was being formed (Unlike the Heat, Newbee actually managed to win the main prize the year that they were formed).
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }
Newbee’s victory was especially impressive because the team nearly didn’t qualify for the tournament. In the group stages, Newbee actually had to play in a couple of tiebreakers to even make the Main Event. From there, Newbee ran through the tournament as they secured the top spot in the upper bracket before beating ViCi Gaming to win the whole thing on Monday.
Don’t feel too sorry for ViCi Gaming though. The second place team took home $1,475,699 which is more than first place won in last year’s International.
