V1lat: “the Extinction of Dota 2 Will Happen next Year”
In an interview with the NaVi YouTube team StarLadder host and Dota caster v1lat has predicted that the extinction of Dota 2 will happen within the next year if things do not change.
The exact quote from v1lat is as follow (please bear in mind this is from English subtitles of a video recorded in Russian.)
“The extinction of Dota 2 will happen next year if things go on as they are. Dota 2 will become what Starcraft now is. There will be 1 series of tournaments held by Valve. If the current situation remains the same, Dota 2 will be demolished.”
He later goes onto call out organisations such as Dota Cinema and Dota Pit for running online only tournaments where prize pools become inflated due to item sets being bundled with tickets. He also says that Dota is falling behind all other eSports and will soon be overtaken by Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm as well.
His biggest gripe seems to be with the online only tournaments making LAN’s redundant as organisations don’t have to spend money on LAN’s in order to get the big prize pools. He suggests that Valve need to distinguish and help fund a certain amount of major LAN tournaments across the year otherwise the scene will become oversaturated with online only tournaments and interest will be lost.
While he does make some good points the 12-month time frame seems very unlikely based on the constantly increasing prize pools seen in the last few months. Add in the fact that TI5 is just around the corner and it seems difficult to believe that Dota will falter in the next year, although changes probably are needed.
You can see the full interview below.
