Ready for some intense Dota 2? The Aegis of Champions is in play once more! Valve has confirmed that The International 10 shall return officially begin in August.

In a fresh blog post Valve mentioned The International 10 will take place this August in Stockholm, Sweden. Beginning with the Group Stage which takes place between August 5 - 8 with the big main event kicking off on August 10 and lasts until August 15.

This is quite a historic event too. Not just because it's Valve and Dota 2, and because of all the delays with this marking something of a return to normalcy for esports - but because of the prize pool. The total has been set at $40,018,195 - which makes it the single biggest prize pool in esports history (beating their own previous record). An absolutely staggering amount of money, one I can't even imagine ever seeing 1% of.

Going along with all this, Valve reiterated their plan to have content released on a more regular schedule, rather than drop everything big in one go for the Battle Pass. They will be shipping two separate events with the first in "mid-to-late June" and the next sometime after The International 10 ends. However, since the Battle Pass funding has already been done, they've added in special Supporters Clubs.

Supporters Clubs are the new way to support your favourites by buying up bundles of badges and seasonal equippable items - 50% of the sales goes to the teams and the content is directly provided by the teams.

Play Dota 2 free on Steam .

Valve along with PGL have announced the return of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's next Major Championship that will take place this year in Sweden.

Not only has competitive esport CS:GO returned, it's coming back with a bang too. This will be the biggest single prize pool in CS:GO history with twenty four teams competing for 2 million dollars USD. Not only that, this will also be the first event that is broadcast live in 4K resolution. The main event will be during November 4-7, so they're leaving enough time to hopefully see COVID-19 get a little more under control as this will be an in-person event with a live audience.

"First of all, my colleagues and I are passionate fans of CS. We grew up and watched this game getting bigger and bigger, just at the same pace as our development as a company. We have timeless memories with our past Counter-Strike shows, and, honestly, we owe a lot to this game, as players and as a company. We believe that this community deserves the best product this franchise has ever seen. Our goal is to celebrate the game in the best way possible, and we will work hard for this" - Silviu Stroie, CEO PGL.

Teams will be picked based on progress through a series of Regional Major Ranking (RMR), these will be online to begin with and eventually an offline in-person event for each region before the Major begins.

More info on the event here .

You can play CS:GO free on Linux from Steam .

As the Dota 2 Battle Pass for The International 10 tournament continues shattering records, Valve have given an update on when they expect the competitive scene to get going again.

This has obviously been a tough year for everyone, with so much being postponed or cancelled completely. Plenty of things did move entirely online but for the Dota 2 competitive scene it was a bit too silent. Valve didn't communicate much in public about their plans, while continuing to pull in money for the upcoming tournament.

In the new blog post update , to talk a little about what's going to happen it was a pretty honest post, with Valve pretty much holding up their hands to admit fault as they "think that a lot of the points that were raised were reasonable criticisms towards us, especially because we did not communicate what our intentions were, and what they could expect in the future".

As for the DPC, Majors and eventually TI - Valve said to expect the start of DPC to be "in the first month or two of 2021", with their current hope that once the first part of DPC concludes, that things might be a bit more open to allow for cross-region majors. As for when the actual The International 10 to happen? It's looking like Stockholm in August 2021, with other countries ready as backups.

Since we last wrote about Dota 2 only a week ago , the prize pool suddenly jumped from $34,539,661 at the time to $35,620,523. That's absolutely incredible, it really will be a tournament to remember with that amount of money on the line for all the teams. Let's hope when things do start up again, that everyone stays safe.

Surprised? I doubt anyone will be. Valve have managed to gather what's now the single biggest prize pool for an event - ever. It's now absolutely massive.

Back in 2019, Epic Games held the title for the biggest prize pool across a tournament with Fortnite. Valve smashed that record not longer after with TI 2019 having a $34,330,069 prize pool. Records are breaking everywhere it seems, as once again it has been eclipsed. The International 10, now has a prize pool of $34,539,661 from the Battle Pass (plus other purchases like the Collector's Cache ) and it's still going up with plenty of time to spare as Valve announced before that it will continue until September 19.

I couldn't imagine receiving the kinds of money these teams do during these tournaments, just blows the mind. Makes me curious how much Valve end up with too, since only 25% of the purchases go to the prize pool.

While this is going on, there's still no set date for when the tournament will happen. It was due this year, which of course was postponed due to COVID19. The Dota 2 team confirmed on Twitter , that no date is set yet:

In following how the pandemic has been developing globally, the recent increase in the unpredictability of COVID-19 means we can’t yet commit to new dates for TI10 and the DPC. We share your eagerness in returning to these events, and will announce updates as soon as we can.

You can play Dota 2 free on Steam .

The International 10, Dota 2's upcoming major tournament is getting close to breaking another record for the prize pool. Plus there's a new Collector's Cache up.

Mostly funded by the Battle Pass , where 25% of it goes into the prize pool and the rest to Valve, making it a tidy earner for Valve even with their costs. For the 2019 tournament, the total managed to hit $34,330,068 which was a world record for the biggest prize pool in a single e-sport event. It's looking this the next tournament is going to be even bigger with it currently sitting at $32,655,676. There's still quite a long while to go too, as the current Battle Pass isn't ending until September 19 . Looks like we might have another world record on our hands here soon! A lot can happen though, as the actual tournament is no longer happening as planned. Valve delayed The International 10 until 2021 , due to all the issues with COVID19 making travel a bad idea.

Helping with that Valve also released The International 10 Collector’s Cache Volume II on August 14, containing a set of items from the Dota 2 Steam Workshop with a full set for multiple hero favourites. 25% of each sale also goes into the overall prize pool and it's only available for 30 days. I have to admit, the Tidehunter skin turning them into something Cthulhu-like is pretty awesome:

You can play Dota 2 on Linux free on Steam .