A few years ago, the idea of eSports was simply a fad, one in which players got together to prove their worth in tournaments for a minimum prize amount. Today, however, is a completely different story.

This past weekend, the EVO 2K tournament drew over 900 tournament players, as well as thousands watching in person and online, proving that the event is more popular than ever before. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as next week’s The International in Seattle, Washington, which revolves around Valve’s highly received PC game DOTA 2, will kick off with the largest prize pool in history – over $10 million.

“For almost all of these things, like The International or a specific feature in the game, it’s hard to figure out who came up with it,” said Erik Johnson of Valve, the developer of DOTA 2. “I’m sure it was in a meeting.”

The game actually made its debut in an unlikely place, during the 2011 Gamescom video game convention in Cologne, Germany. “The problem with DOTA 2 is that it doesn’t lend itself well to a canned experience or just letting someone play it,” said Johnson.

With that, the team hosted an invitation-only tournament to show certain people what it would look like if professionals took part in sessions. At that time, the tournament gave away $1.6 million in prizes, a top mark for eSports at that point.

Since then, the tournaments have been setting bigger and bigger records, with $2.8 million handed out last year, and $10.7 million generated for this year, mainly from portions of sales of online DOTA 2 goods to fans.

“We knew it was going to go up compared to last year,” said Johnson. “Because we had a lot more people playing the game, the user base had about doubled. We also were in China now and the user base that could buy things had more than doubled. So we expected a substantial increase. But even with all of those things, we didn’t see any of this coming.”

And, like last year’s tournament, those who can’t attend in person will be able to view The International online, watching people go at it for part of the huge prize pool.

Still, the company isn’t intent on letting DOTA 2 have all the fun, as it could be planning another tournament for a popular first-person shooter, Counter-Strike Global Offensive. “The Counter-Strike team pays pretty close attention to what’s going on,” concluded Johnson. “We share a lot of ideas between the two products.”

eSports, your time has arrived.

Source: Polygon