The Dota 2 competitive scene has been in a strange state since Valve canceled the 2022 Dota Pro Circuit Winter Tour Major, but it looks like the company has already settled on an early format for a replacement—and a potential expansion for The International 11.
According to Dota talent Shannon “SUNSfan” Scotten via his podcast We Say Things, Valve is going to host several online regional tournaments throughout February that will take the top four teams from each of the six DPC regions.
These regional finals will reportedly take place over two weekends in February, with each weekend hosting three regions. The prize pool for each region is reported to sit at $100,000, for a total of $600,000, and the top two teams in a region will earn an undisclosed number of DPC points, with those points being even for every region.
Additionally, SUNSfan noted that Valve is rolling back its decision to redistribute DPC points throughout the second and third DPC Majors, restoring the numbers back to what their total was before the Winter Tour Major was originally canceled. If confirmed, the second Major would have a total of 2,700 DPC points, while the third Major would have 3,500 DPC points up for grabs.
This means Valve was unable to put together a LAN event to take the place of the Major as mentioned in the company’s initial apology, and will instead be running regional finals as a way to appease players and fans.
SUNSfan also reported that Valve is expanding the roster for the next iteration of The International from 18 teams to 20 teams. Based on this report, Valve will take the second and third-place teams from each regional TI qualifier and host another LAN tournament before TI11. Out of those 12 teams, two from each of the six regions, the top two will qualify for TI and enter the group stage as the lowest-seeded team.
Overall, this means that TI11’s will feature two groups made up of 10 teams and two teams will be eliminated from each group before the main stage.
Valve has not officially announced any of these changes, but SUNSfan did say his sources thought that a majority of the news has been locked in and an announcement is likely imminent. And with the last of the regional leagues wrapping up their Winter Tour over the next few days, we could be seeing an update very soon.
You can listen to the full episode of SUNSfan and syndereN’s We Say Things podcast on YouTube, which includes additional discussion about the current DPC season.
