Valve is making massive changes to its competitive circuit forDota 2, according to reports from professional esports teams. Rather than a schedule of “Major” and “Minor” tournaments throughout the year, Valve is shrinking the schedule significantly and will fill the space with regional leagues. It’s not entirely clear why Valve made the decision, but some speculate it could either be due to the shrinkingDota 2player base or in an effort to imitate theLeague of Legendscompetitive format.
To get into specifics, there will now officially be three majorDota 2tournaments in the 2020/2021 competitive year. That’s down from five major tournaments and three minor tournaments in the 2019/2020 season. Both years will haveThe Internationaltournament cap off their schedule of majors. That means, presumably, that 2020/2021 will have just four tournaments compared to 2019/2020’s nine. That’s a massive shift away from big events.
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According to reports from LiquidDota, the tournaments will be replaced with assorted “two-tier regional leagues.” The lack ofmajor tournamentswill allow the leagues to run for longer periods of time, providing them a more valuable role in the greater competitive season. Leagues will serve as qualifiers for the Major tournaments, with both leagues and Majors awarding qualifying points for The International. Regional leagues are said to include North America, South America, Europe, CIES, Southeast Asia, and China.
The variousDota 2leagues won’t be closed leagues like inOverwatchorLeague of Legends, however. Each league will have relegation systems allowing for a season-to-season churn of teams. The bottom two Tier 1 teams each season will drop to Tier 2 while the top two Tier 2 teams will climb to Tier 1. The bottom Tier 2 teams will drop out and have to go through open qualifiers to get back in. Valve won’t be running thee leagues itself, but rather bidding them out. It’s possible that these leagues will be all online, with no LAN component.
The worry is that Valve is scaling back the competitive scene due toDota 2’s shrinking player base. In 2020,Dota 2is averaging less than 400,000 players on Steam, a number that hasn’t been seen consistently since 2013. Valve may not be doing this out of worry, however, but rather to better balance the schedule and provide it a better foundation. Leagues will ensure thatDota 2remains played throughout the competitive season while also driving more attention to the less frequent tournaments. It’s a style that works very well forLeague of Legends. It’ll be interesting to see whether it benefitsDota 2, as well.
