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Why did Valve give up on The International?

Andrew Boggs

Sports Writer

Publish Date: 09/10/2025

Fact checked by: Alyx Tzamantanis

Key Points

Valve downsized The International by removing the Battle Pass and switching to a free Compendium funded through team and talent bundles.
TI14 in Hamburg featured a new Swiss Stage format and wrapped with a $2,881,791 prize pool, the second lowest in modern TI history.
Despite smaller funding, TI remains Dota 2’s world championship. Still annual, still official, just no longer built around mega-crowdfunding.

Dota 2 TI14 2025 Recap – Falcons Win, Prize Pool Trends & New Format

Another TI in the books, and it didn’t feel quite like the old days. The International 2025 (TI14) wrapped up in Hamburg with Team Falcons beating Xtreme Gaming in a five-game final.

The event introduced the first-ever Swiss Stage, used a split format (Road to TI + Playoffs), and ran on a prize pool of just short of $2.9M. Naturally, the Reddit threads came fast: “Valve gave up.” “TI’s dead.” “How did we go from $40 million to this?” But the truth is more about priorities than abandonment. Keep reading to find out more.

Dota 2 TI14 2025 Recap – Falcons Win, Prize Pool Trends & New Format

What changed in 2025

TI14 didn’t disappear. It didn’t even downgrade production. It just… stopped chasing the mega Battle Pass hype train.

Free Compendium, new funding

This year’s Compendium was free, which already tells you a lot. No levelling, no cosmetics to grind, no $10 starter bundles feeding the prize pool. Valve deliberately detached monetisation from the event.

Instead, TI14’s prize pool came from team and talent bundles. Sets tied to orgs, casters, and content creators. Players could still support their favourites, and 25% of each purchase went into the pool. The bundles also offered better revenue share for orgs, which is Valve quietly backing the broader ecosystem, not just the championship.

No Battle Pass meant no explosive $40M prize fund, but also no dev team burning months of work on one cosmetic hamster wheel.

Format refresh (Swiss) & two-phase event

TI14 also introduced a Swiss group stage for the first time, used in other esports for years, but a fresh format for Dota 2. The event itself was split into two parts:

Road to The International: The Swiss Stage group phase, hosted in late September.
The International Playoffs: The final bracket, where Falcons and Xtreme met in a nailbiter of a grand final.

The structure got praise for surfacing strong teams more reliably and giving every squad multiple matches on Dota 2 betting sites. It wasn’t perfect, but it felt like forward motion, not a retreat.

Dota 2 TI14 2025

The numbers: How The International lost its money mojo

This is where most of the “Valve gave up” discourse starts. The prize pool. TI14’s final prize pool closed at $2,881,791. That’s officially the second lowest in modern TI history, just above last year’s $2.77M, which was already a dramatic drop. Let’s look at the trend:

🗓️ Year	💡 TI #	🤑 Prize Pool
2021	TI10	$40,018,195
2022	TI11	$18,930,775
2023	TI12	$3,380,455
2024	TI13	$2,776,566
2025	TI14	$2,881,791

Yes, the numbers fell off a cliff, but not randomly. Valve intentionally pivoted away from the mega Battle Pass, which used to pump tens of millions into TI via cosmetic sales. Once that system was sunset, the prize pools normalized to something closer to most esports.

Where the money comes from now

Instead of tying all monetisation to one event, Valve is now pushing revenue share via bundles across the year. Teams get actual cut-through, fans can support talent directly, and Dota’s content cadence no longer revolves around a three-month cosmetic binge.

It’s not about fireworks anymore. It’s about foundations.

dota 2 TI14

The “did Valve give up?” argument

This is where the debate gets murky, because “gave up” is doing a lot of work for what’s really a shift in philosophy.

What fans mean by “gave up”

The prize pool is the smallest since 2013.
There’s no massive Battle Pass to generate hype or funding.
Other events (like Riyadh Masters) outspend TI and draw more immediate prestige.

If you only looked at money and scale, it’d be easy to call this a retreat.

But here’s what Valve actually did

TI still happens every year. TI14 just wrapped. TI15 is in pre-production. Valve even published an official champions post and a thank-you message from Gabe Newell.
The Compendium is free, meaning everyone can follow the event without paying. That’s not giving up, it’s accessibility.
Valve’s shifted the dev team to focus on year-round updates (like Crownfall) instead of one giant cosmetic dump. It’s a better balance for the game itself.

So sure, the firework budget’s smaller. But the core structure, the championship, the Aegis, the prestige, is still intact. Valve’s just not interested in winning the cash race anymore.

dota 2 the international

What this means for 2026 and beyond

TI’s not gone. It’s just changed lanes. Here’s what I expect to change.

1️⃣ The free-Compendium model will probably stick

Valve seems happy with it. It lowers the barrier to entry, doesn’t tie the dev team into six months of hat-making, and builds long-term trust with the community.

But the downside is clear. Smaller prize pools. There’s no natural way to 10x the money without premium cosmetics or external sponsors. So unless Valve changes course, this 2–3M prize pool range might be the new normal.

2️⃣ The new prestige equation

TI still has the Aegis, the legacy, the storylines, and the prestige of being the world championship.

But if Riyadh, ESL, or EWC want to run $10M tournaments in the middle of the year, Valve seems… fine with that. They’re letting the ecosystem decentralise, and that might be healthier overall. Even if it means TI is no longer the only party in town.

3️⃣ Fans want magic, but devs need margin

The old system asked the game team to build one massive, monetisation-focused event each year, at the cost of other updates, stability, or features.

This new version gives more space for Crownfall, UI overhauls, hero updates, and all the stuff that’s made Dota 2 feel more alive again. So while some fans miss the fireworks, the developers probably aren’t looking back.

Free Compendium

We’re not in Seattle anymore

The International 2025 wasn’t a retreat, it was a right-sizing.

Valve isn’t chasing the $40M peak anymore. Instead, they’ve retooled TI to sit alongside the rest of the competitive calendar, not overshadow it. They’ve given more financial agency to teams and talent. And they’ve taken the dev foot off the monetisation gas pedal, at least when it comes to one single event.

It’s smaller. It’s quieter. But it’s still TI. And as long as there’s an Aegis to lift, it’s not going anywhere.