Esports: Valve Corporation creates most comprehensive Battle Pass to date for postponed ‘TI10’

Every year the world of the most cash rich esport, Dota 2 conducts its flagship event known as the TI (The International). This event offers the largest prize-pool among all esports events. The ninth edition better known as TI9, held in Shanghai, offered had a final prize-pool of $34.33 million, of which the winning team took home a whopping $15.5 million. So, it was natural for excitement to build up for the for the tenth anniversary of this much-awaited event. But COVID-19 proved an obstacle, as it has everywhere else, as a few weeks earlier Valve, the organisers, announced that they were indefinitely postponing the event. Yet, there was some good news for esports followers as Valve said they would release the Battle Pass for the event on schedule. Though Valve had announced the release of Battle Pass at the time of postponement, there were still some apprehensions about that and the overall situation of the TI. The feeling was that the ongoing pandemic would play major spoilsport for all things related to the world of Dota 2.

The International Battle Pass is here! https://t.co/ccUPd5UBzb

— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) May 25, 2020

Things looked uncertain as one of the big Dota 2 tournaments, ESL One Los Angeles (a million dollar plus event) was cancelled midway through the tournament due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Tickets had been sold, group stage matches had begun before the event was called off on 12 March, 2020, just around the time when many major other sporting events of the world were also being cancelled. Then came Valve’s announcement of TI10’s indefinite postponement. The statement mentioned the possibility of TI10 being postponed to early 2021. Earlier, this week Valve released the Battle Pass without mentioning the dates or the venue of the TI10. Valve Corporation has shown its commitment to the community and the tournament by releasing what is easily the most rewarding Battle Pass to date. Ever since TI3 in 2013 Valve corporation has made the event largely crowd-funded through the sale of exclusive Battle Passes that offer in-game items to players. The model adds 25 percent of the sales from all battle passes and related items directly to the prize-pool of the tournament. Starting 2017 the Battle Pass would even offer an exclusive Arcana item as a reward. The Arcana items is among the rarest of items in Dota 2 as they offer extensive customisations to the hero in the game they were developed for. This is the only way in the game to change the basic animation of a hero currently. The Arcana offered as exclusives for a Battle Pass are ‘limited edition Arcanas’ that can not be bought like the others from the game’s in-built store. So, the ‘limited edition Arcanas’ are coveted by players. In both 2017 and 2018 one of them was on offer in the Battle Pass as a reward. The 2020 edition has three of these items to offer. Along with this increase there is the fact that there are also two persona items on offer as part of the Battle Pass this year. The persona item was something introduced for the first time as a part of the Battle Pass in 2019. These items completely change a playable character in the game as it offers the same character to be played from a different part of their timeline instead of the present. Given this massive motherload of a release by Valve and the fact that like the previous years 25 percent of sales will also become a part of the prize-pool for TI10 has rasied hopes of the many fans of the game worldwide that the event even if it is delayed will happen and it will be as big as the previous editions. This year Valve like the previous year has set some community goals for the prize-pool of the event to motivate fans to continue making purchases. In 2019 the two community goals were to cross the prize-pool for 2018 and then to cross the $30 million mark. In 2020 the aims set for the community is to surpass the prize-pool for 2019 and to cross the $40 million mark. This extremely ambitious aim of $40 million has shown that the company is still extremely positive in its thinking towards the events and its success despite the tough times.