‘Dota 2’ championship makes historic Vancouver move

Vancouver. Image: brytta/Istock.Com via AFP Relaxnews

This year’s edition of eSports’ biggest annual tournament, The International “Dota 2” Championships, will take place in Vancouver, west coast Canada, after six years in Seattle.

With a prize pool regularly floating north of $20 million (about over P1 billion), The International is a prestige fixture on the eSports circuit.

It’s the pinnacle event for team game “Dota 2”, which made a splash at the first ever edition of The International during the Gamescom convention in Cologne, Germany.

Thereafter, the pro-level invitational has been held in Seattle, northwest United States, home of the game’s developer Valve Corp., whose history includes formative franchises “Half-Life” and “Portal”, as well as another eSports fixture, “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” and PC gaming’s dominant digital download store, Steam.

But after six years in Washington state, first at the 2,500 capacity Benaroya Hall and then, from 2014, at the 17,000 person KeyArena, The International is moving northward still, across the border and into the 19,000 seater Rogers Arena, downtown Vancouver.

The coastal city is a regular in global quality of life rankings, while the Rogers Arena hosts the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team.

The week-long International Dota 2 Championships will run from Aug. 20 to 25, 2018, with ticket sales starting on March 23 at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. PDT; midweek tickets, for Monday to Thursday access, are priced at $125 CAD ($95 or nearly P5,000), with finals tickets for Friday and Saturday at $250 CAD ($190 or almost P10,000), Valve explained in an official blog post.

Valve is currently expected to broadcast the event live through the “Dota 2” game client and via online video streaming platform Twitch, as it has done in previous years. JB

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