Valve says goodbye to the Dota Pro Circuit

Developer Valve has dropped some huge news for Dota 2 esports fans following the conclusion of the regional qualifiers for The International 2023. This year was the final Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) as we know it, as Valve waves goodbye to the DPC…

Valve stops DPC

Originally, the DPC was created to determine invites to the annual The International and has been running since 2017. In a recent blog post, Valve noted that the DPC brought with it a set of rules and regulations and that the cost of all this was that Dota 2 esports has “grown less varied, and ultimately much less fun.”

The TLDR of all of this is that Valve is stopping the DPC, and The International going forward will move back to some sort of invite system once again, with the specifics yet to be determined. Yes, don’t worry, there will be a The International 2024!

Valve talks DPC and explains its decision:

“Before we introduced these constraints, the world of competitive Dota was healthier, more robust and more varied than the one we have now. Events used to be less rote and more creative, and there was more room in the calendar for them. Everything was open for exploration: event length and themed venues and team participation and even the basic assumptions of tournament design.

There was a beautiful unregulated insanity to it all — casual house parties and oyster prize pools coexisted alongside the Dota Asia Championships and one-off invitationals. It would be too simplistic to say that the slow drift of the Dota competitive scene away from this focus on fun and creativity towards the sterile, near-monoculture of today is entirely the fault of the DPC, but the DPC has generated significant pressure and incentives that led us here. The Dota community has decades of grassroots experience coming up with innovative and entertaining events, and right now the DPC is getting in the way.”

It remains to be seen how teams will get invited to The International 2024 without a DPC season. We do, however, think that this might be for the best, and tournament organizers such as ESL are already stepping up and teasing some big plans.

Header image via Valve.