Valve has announced The International 2020 tournament for DOTA 2 (Dawn of the Ancients 2) will be delayed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The International tournament would typically take place yearly, with Battle Pass DLC helping fund the tournament’s prize pool. However, it seems the tournament will now take place in 2021.
The announcement from the official DOTA 2 website reads as follows.
“After extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19, we have made the difficult choice to delay The International. We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021. Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, virus trajectory, and global travel policies, we don’t expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future. In the meantime, we are working on restructuring the DPC season for the fall, and will be providing more information as soon as we have it.
The 10th International prize pool will be funded by 25% of sales of the next Battle Pass, which we are planning to release soon instead of closer to the event itself. However, with our team working from home and things taking longer to complete, the release date of the Battle Pass will be at least a couple of weeks later than usual.
We hope everyone in the Dota community is staying as safe as possible, and look forward to a time when we can once again welcome everyone to enjoy the spectacle of The International.”
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic (also known as COVID-19 officially, or Chinese Flu to others) has affected many worldwide, from businesses to public gatherings and events.
This includes postponements of GDC, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the physical events for EVO 2020 and Fortnite Competitive tournaments, and cancellations E3 2020 (including digital events), the physical event for Gamescom 2020, and Comiket 98.
We also reported on physical versions of The Wonderful 101: Remastered being delayed (including for Kickstarter backers), along with the rumor that Nintendo would cancel their June Nintendo Direct.
The Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering are mapping the virus’ spread [1, 2]. As of this time of writing, there have been over 3.321 million total confirmed cases worldwide, and over 2.041 million active cases. There have been over 237,000 deaths, however over 1.043 million people have made a “total recovery.”
DOTA 2 is available for free on Windows PC, Linux, and Mac (all via Steam).
