Vasilisa spoke about the importance of The International for the Dota 2 community

Let me put it this way: for anyone who prioritizes finances and material things—that’s certainly cool, awesome, and great—but The International remains the main tournament organized by the developers anyway. First and foremost, the prestige is 100% higher because it’s directly tied to the game client itself. You remain, roughly speaking, in Dota forever and so on. The EWC has its advantages, but they’re mostly benefits for the organization. So we have an organization that competes in millions of disciplines, and we get a huge prize pool. But, to put it bluntly, we tend to forget about that. They also have great storytelling—they have those little triangles that they break apart.

But The International is history. History must be cherished; history must be respected. Compared to the prize money, that’s what we discuss most often: “Where’s our prize money?” To be honest, I don’t like talking about money or material things, but this year’s prize pool will be, I think, much larger for a number of reasons—and very interesting. That’s because there used to be certain restrictions on organizations creating their own content. Now they can bring in anyone who, let’s say, is affiliated with the organization. The latest news is about Dora and the BetBoom Team.

So I think our prize pool will definitely go up by an unknown amount. But the prize pool isn’t the main thing. [What is the main thing?] The atmosphere. You know what’s great about The International? Where it’s taking place? [In Shanghai]. And do you know what isn’t required for this? No visas are needed. So you, me, all of us—we can just pack up, go there, and watch it. Because we don’t need to apply for visas, and we don’t have to fly to the other side of the world. It’s not hard to get to China. And in that regard, first of all, the venue’s attendance will be different compared to when it was held elsewhere. Accessibility comes first. If The International were in Moscow, I think it would be a huge hit. Someday we’ll get to see that. At least, I hope so. And it’s the same here. Because it’s accessible to travel there and watch it all at a LAN event, and it doesn’t require a huge investment to, let’s say, see it all in person, it will be much more valuable.