Valve has announced its changes to the Dota 2 Pro Circuit for season 2018 – 2019 starting this September 2018.
To help players, teams, and organizers prepare for the upcoming season, a few big changes are on the way, notably on ownership or shares of teams and DCP points, player movement penalties, team invites, qualifications and also season schedule.
Teams and Rosters
- To be eligible for the season teams must register their roster by September 15th, 2018 at 10:00 AM PDT.
- No hard roster locks up until when The International Invites and Qualifiers start. From that point on teams will no longer be allowed to change their roster until the conclusion of the TI Main event with the rare exception to substitutes, subject to approval from Valve of course.
- Changing rosters during the season will no longer disqualify a team from DPC consideration either.
- Teams hold The International qualifying points instead of individual players.
- Teams are allowed to remove players (or players can decide to leave) at the cost of 20% of the teams current total DCP points per player removed.
- Adding a new player will not earn any additional points.
- If a team plays in a Pro Circuit event without their official five-man roster, the points earned for that event will be reduced by 40%.
- When playing in a Minor or Major qualifier, teams must always use at least 4 of their 5 registered players.
Team Ownership & Invites
Following on shortly after the CS:GO ownership rules:
- In cases where one organization or person has ownership in multiple teams, only one of those teams will be eligible to compete in The International, regardless of DPC qualifying points.
However, Valve is giving close to a year to all players, owners and shareholders to sort their business out.
- All teams can participate in the Pro Circuit Majors and Minors leading up to next year’s TI, but all ownership conflicts will need to be resolved prior to TI Regional Qualifiers. This includes cases in which players have financial ties to other teams.
Minors and Major:
- Next season’s Minor and Major events will be held in pairs, with the qualifiers for each set to run in exclusively scheduled windows.
- There will be no direct invites to either Minors or Majors but in some cases, reserved slots will apply.
- The Major qualifier will run first, and teams who do not qualify for the Major will be eligible to compete in the Minor qualifiers a few days later.
- The winner of the Minor Main Event will have a reserved slot in the respective Major happening shortly afterwards.
- All Minors must feature at least eight teams, with a minimum of one qualifier per region.
- Majors must have at least sixteen teams, with at least two qualifiers per region.
- All teams that play in a Minor or Major will earn DPC points.
- Teams participating in the Minors will be required to work on the Visa application in advance of the tournament, in order to be able to make the Major if they win.
Following these changes, Valve is currently accepting applications for all of the Minor and Major tournaments apart from the first Major in November.
Reaction from the Dota 2 scene has been very positive so far and understandably so.
Very happy to see Valve unequivocally and publicly tackle all potential conflict of interest issues for next year's DPC.
This is a big step in ensuring competitive integrity for future years
— LD ? gamescom (@LDeeep) June 4, 2018
Great to see Valve extending the conflict of interest rules regarding ownership to Dota 2 as well. I wonder how that will impact on the scene ahead of next year's International.https://t.co/WbgSGlAXsr
— Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) June 4, 2018
Everything said in this blog post is fucking incredible news.
– paired minors/majors
– no ownership conflicts (xdruru)
– no more hard locks
– no more 'join the team bring all the points xd!'Interesting that this suggests ESL Hamburg 2018 will not be a part of the DPC calendar https://t.co/vmtHQgNZ5F
— Ben Steenhuisen (@Noxville) June 4, 2018
With some valuable remarks here and there
One thing the blog post does not address is how Dota teams belonging to a region is defined. Will be a big topic with no more direct invites. In CSGO it is pretty clear by nationality.
— Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) June 4, 2018
https://twitter.com/william_partin/status/1003740104047947778
Just remember Dota fans, this is all because of Noxville
Not that I'm gonna take the credit for it (jk ofc I will), but in my interview with @olliering for @redbullesports (https://t.co/XOruAUEhdQ) in which I discussed improvements for the next DPC season, I suggested paired Minors/Majors as part of a cycle effort. pic.twitter.com/ipFFB04tUz
— Ben Steenhuisen (@Noxville) June 4, 2018
Full release including dates for upcoming Major and Minor events can be found here.
Esports Insider says: With a very specific schedule set out for next season it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Tier 1 teams at every event, allowing for additional third-party events in between giving room to up-and-comers to make their mark. However, this could also just leave the newcomers without a chance if the tournament organisers don’t take the bait and only focus on Minors and Majors.