14 DAY TRIAL // Dota 2's The International championship is in full swing, and the fact that Valve made over $30 million / €22 million from Compendium sales makes the company think that a lot of the things that worked for Dota 2 could also be applied to Counter-Strike.
Although the company does not yet have any official announcements to make, an interview with Erik Johnson, one of Valve's business guys, has revealed that he thinks that much of what went well with The International can be directly applied to the company's other highly competitive franchise, the tactical team-based first-person shooter Counter-Strike.
Johnson's answers come from an interview with Russian news site Prodota.ru, and the relevant questions begin at around the 2:20 mark.
"I don't know if it would be called The International but the guys working on Counter Strike have made a lot of progress on supporting the professional community. We all work at the same company, we share a lot of ideas, and seeing how successful this tournament has become I don't see any reason that a lot of the same things could be applied directly to Counter-Strike," he says.
"We don't have anything to announce right now, but as a company there's a lot of data as to how well the community has responded to The International and how it's grown. It would be pretty difficult to ignore for any game team," he continues.
The International's growth is impressive indeed, as at last count, the event's Compendium digital feature raised this year's prize pool to over $10 million / €7 million, while also earning Valve over $30 million / €22 million, which makes it a pretty lucrative endeavor.
Since its full release one year ago, Valve's sequel to the popular Defense of the Ancients WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne mod has garnered quite a following. While far from being as popular as Riot Games' very own multiplayer online battle arena game, League of Legends, Dota 2 is quickly picking up the pace, as evidenced by the success of The International.
Steam offers some very relevant information regarding the popularity of Dota 2, as its statistics page points out to the game being routinely enjoyed by up to 800k concurrent players every day, and showing a steady month-ove- month increase.
Although Counter-Strike is nowhere near the level of popularity that Dota 2 enjoys, there is still a pretty big, competitive market for the game, and a global competition of its own is likely to turn out pretty successful.
