During a segment on Thursday’s We Say Things Podcast hosted by Shannon “SUNSfan” Scotten and Troels Lyngholt “syndereN” Nielsen, the pair revealed that Valve will be supplementing the cancelled Dota Major with a set of regional brackets. The podcast also went over new information regarding The International 11.
Valve adds regional bracket to replace cancelled Major
According to the We Say Things podcast, Valve will be adding a regional bracket for each of the six regions in order to distribute Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) points accordingly. This move comes as a response to the backlash that Valve received for cancelling the Winter Major 2022. In their blog post, they cited the growing threat of the Omicron variant, a lack of willing tournament organizers and travel restrictions. According to SUNSfan, there will be DPC points to gain for the top two in each regional bracket, and a cash prize.
“There will be $100,000 per region for these tournaments” SUNSfan said. “The top two get DPC points. All the regions get the same amount of points distributed.”
The regional brackets allow Valve to redistribute the DPC points that were previously going to the next two seasons of the DPC. In effect, the previous changes made the current DPC season meaningless. However, the new regional brackets allow for the achievements of teams this season to matter. While it might not be a battle between some of the best teams in the world, it still allows competition to be the deciding factor in gaining DPC points.
Another important announcement during the show was that Valve would be increasing the number of teams to appear at The International 11 from 18 to 20. The two new teams will be chosen from the second and third place teams at the regional qualifiers before The International 11. The teams who got 2nd and 3rd at the regional qualifier will compete in a last chance qualifier where the last two teams standing will get an invite to the International 11.
