Valve Has Already Made Over $ 9 Million By Selling The International Compendium Books In DOTA 2 PC Game

Since the inception of DOTA (Defence Of The Ancients) map, which was available in Blizzards Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne we have been closely watching (and playing) this popular 5 versus 5 multiplayer online battle game on the PC. The maker (designer) of the map called IceFrog later joined hands with Valve in 2009 to produce the map as a separate game all together, calling it DOTA 2.

Today it is one of the most played online games on PC and has servers all over the globe, which get staggering number of gamers each day. Valve recently announced ‘The International 2014’ DOTA 2 tournament where best teams from all over the planet like Empire from Russia, DK from China and Evil Geniuses from USA are invited to play the tournament and win a prize that will go into millions of dollars.

Released last Saturday (10 May, 2014) with starting total prize money of US$ 1.6 million, the latest DOTA 2 tournament has seen a great opening. The prize pool gets larger as people keep buying the 2014 edition of ‘The Compendium’ worth US$ 9.99. For each compendium sold The Internationals prize pool gets US$ 2.5. Over that, the prize pool also expands when people who have already purchased the Compendium, buy points to level up their Compendium rank. Increasing the ranks fetches the Compendium owner’s additional in-game prizes and items. People can buy 2,400 points of US$9.99 out of which US$ 2.5 goes to the prize pool.

Within 5 days of launch the total prize pool has crossed US$ 4.8 million and if it goes at the same pace the prize pool will cross US$ 6 million in no time. This means the team who comes in the first place by the end of the tournament will be richer by at least 2 million dollars. But, what is more intriguing here is that by just selling this one in-game purchase (and level points) Valve has managed make over US$ 9 million in the last 5 days. Valve pockets US$ 7.5 for each Compendium sold and if our calculations are right they have sold over 1.2 million of these nifty little DOTA 2 tournament books (and level points). And as we speak thousands of gamers from around the globe are buying them making Valve richer by millions of dollars.