Dota 2 is Almost “Dead” In India
Dota 2 is Almost “Dead” In India
In recent years, Dota 2 eSports has become one of the most popular games and disciplines in the whole world. India wasn`t an exception – prize pools, fans, tournaments and the growth of professional players in India. The top popularity of this game was in 2016-2017.
Despite all this, the last couple of years, Dota has been losing its popularity in this country. Tournament organizers and sponsors have focused on other games like PUBG mobile or CS: GO. Not so many people began to turn their attention and invest money in Dota. At that time the PUBG mobile was becoming more and more popular every day.
In 2019, several organizations created their own Dota 2 rosters at once. These are Signify, Entity Gaming, Reckoning Esports, and Global Esports. But they all ceased to exist by the end of the year.
The first team to break up was Signify. After it, the rest of the organizations seemed to follow their example. They dismissed their teams without any explanation or official statements. And this is despite the fact that the teams showed pretty good results at LAN tournaments.
As a result, on December 15, the last remaining Global Esports team closed its Dota 2 roster. The organization attributed this to a decrease in the game’s popularity and the number of viewers.
“There has been a decline of viewer number during the past few months cumulatively based on the response from the community and the situation with Dota 2 in general. Taking into account everything we have learned from this experience we have decided that we will be stepping down from Dota 2 in India.”
Some other organizations have become interested in the eSports market in India like Fnatic. But even they are more focused on the PUBG mobile than on Dota 2.
It is not surprising that so few players arise in this country because of unstable situation There is no stability in Dota 2 eSports, no salaries or reliable organization to look after all this staff.
Another problem that eSports faced in India is the lack of information on the number of viewers on the broadcasts. Platforms like Hotstar or Voot do not publish them. But some tournaments were covered on Twitch and YouTube and the information is known.
The Taiwan Excellence Gaming Cup 2019 only had a total viewership of 7.7K for both Dota 2 and CS: GO combined, whilst the WESG 2019: South Asian Finals only had a peak viewership of 969 and an average viewership of 317 people.
Contrast these numbers with those of PUBG Mobile tournaments such as the PMCO 2019 Fall South Asia (249.8K Peak Viewership, 63.6K Average Viewership) or Garena Free Fire tournaments such as the Free Fire India Today League (86.3K Peak Viewership, 7.5K Average Viewership) and it is easy to see that Dota 2 has been dwarfed in terms of viewership.
Another problem with Dota 2 is the lack of tournaments in this country. Nobody wants to organize and pay for a tournament for a game that none of their compatriots are watching. One of the tournaments, The DreamHack Delhi Invitational 2019 was known for “bring your own computer for the game”, and the prize pool was just $ 500. Some annual organizers that had previously consistently held Dota 2 events have completely abandoned this game.
In 2019, the Dota 2 prize pool was less than $ 400000 in India. And if you remove the largest of the tournaments ESL One Mumbai 2019 that was held, the rest of the tournaments will gain only 82 thousand dollars. This is much less than in most countries that play Dota 2.
These numbers are fucking surprising! But this is a natural phenomenon since tier two Dota 2 scene is losing interest around the world.
In these conditions, new players cannot appear and show themselves on the tournaments. India has only old Dota 2 players reshuffling amongst each other in different teams.
If Valve doesn`t help India with DPC tournaments, it is not known what will happen to this region further. Let’s hope that they will hope with these difficult times for Dota 2 eSports!
