Dota 2 Getting High End Competitive Play Features

Valve is adding support for high-end competitive play to action RTS game Dota 2 this week.

The features will enable tournament organizers and professional players to communicate with much more ease than the current setup allows.

The update brings Tournament View to the client, letting players to see current and past tournaments. The system will enable you to separate the wheat from the chaff and Valve, being the lovely company it is, will share money with tournament organizers.

“This won’t be the end of our features for tournaments, or players, but we think it’s the right first step – helping tournaments become more financially stable helps all the players participating in them,” the Dota 2 team explained via a blog update.

“Our goal here isn’t to replace web-based streams – we think those are fantastic, and we’ll continue to do the best we can to support them. Some customers will always prefer to use their web browser to watch matches.

“But we think there are some customers who’d like to invest in a higher fidelity, richer experience that they have more control over, and we hope to be able to provide that with the in-game Tournament view.

“We also believe that external companies providing financial support for tournaments is a crucial component to the competitive scene, and we have several ideas for how to provide them with features that will work in both the Tournament view and web-based streams.”

There’s also a brand new system to improve the game for competitive teams. It  allows players to mark themselves as a competitive team to Dota 2 and provide extra information. There’ll be all sorts of statistical stuff so teams can get a view of their overall performance over a period of time. The game will notice when matches occur between competitive teams and highlight such events.

Once Valve has “the kinks ironed out” of the new Team system it’ll be unrolled to all.

Dota 2 is still a beta but manages to top the Steam chart as the number 1 most-played game, last year bringing in over $1 million dollars to professional gamers.

The second international Dota 2 tournament is coming to PAX East later this year, and offer a $1 million prize.