14 DAY TRIAL // Valve's latest edition of The International, the worldwide Dota 2 championship, managed to raise a pool of $10 / €7.5 million in prize money, and Riot Games, the leading developer in the MOBA world, apparently has no plans to match the impressive amount anytime soon.
The company's decision to keep to its smaller prize pool, totaling around $2 / €1.5 million each year, is tied to the belief that it's a surefire way to ensure the future of the professional gaming branch of League of Legends, Riot Games' multiplayer online battle arena game, the most popular video game of its genre.
The news comes from the head of EU eSports division at Riot Games, Jason Yeh, who told Polygon that the company intended to future proof League of Legends by making sure to first invest in the entire infrastructure as a whole, which Riot believes will ensure the longevity of League of Legends as an eSports.
The company claims that while offering a giant pool of money each year might make for good headlines, emulating real-world sports events and aiming to come up with large-scale pro-gaming events on a more regular basis is the way to go, not going all-in with a single, yearly event.
Furthermore, Riot Games is not interested in maintaining a large annual prize pool by supplementing it with crowdfunding like Valve, because it has already taken responsibility for this aspect of its business, and does not want to risk running into the possible long-term issues that a crowdfunded prize pool could produce.
Riot believes that relying on "begging" its fans for prize money could potentially result in a year having a smaller prize pool than a previous one, which would be a "disaster."
Valve opened sales of its digital program for The International 2014 championships in May, having a quarter of the sales contribute directly to the prize pool. Funds from the sale of the virtual compendium playbook quickly inflated the tournament's pot from the $1.6 / €1.2 million set by Valve to $4 / €3 million within a week, managing to eventually surpass $10 / €7.5 million.
So, for all intents and purposes, Riot Games doesn't plan to jump on the bandwagon anytime soon, and open up donations or other means through which to grow the prize pool it's already offering.
Company representatives have said on many different occasions that they see the future of League of Legends to be very healthy, as the game has a potential for longevity that only the MOBA genre could offer, and Riot aims to steadily grow the number and scope of its competitive events over the course of the next decade.