Earlier this month, during the International, I had a chance to sit down with Valve s Erik Johnson for half an hour to discuss Dota 2 s past, present, and future. In particular, I was keen to talk to Erik about Valve s approach to the community—the way it chooses to talk to, and not to talk to, the increasingly large group of people who make Dota 2 their hobby. I can t promise too many hot scoops from what follows—this is Valve we re talking about—but it should be of interest if you re curious about how Valve operate as a game developer and service provider. This is the philosophy that produces the stuff you love about Dota as well as the stuff that makes you angry. The two are not, it turns out, entirely separable.

PC Gamer: With regards to Reborn, how has the beta been going? When you rolled it out, the plan for launch was post-TI . Have there been any surprises? Has it progressed slower or faster than you expected, in terms of issues rolling in?

Erik Johnson: Not really. There s a bunch of cool custom games getting built which we kind of expected. We re happy with overall performance of the engine across a variety of hardware. Dota runs faster on higher-end machines, which is what you d hope would happen if you made a big technology investment, so yeah—we re happy with how things are moving.

PCG: Is there an ETA, for Reborn?

EJ: No ETA, but sooner rather than later. Once this tournament s over, that s the thing we re pushing hardest.

PCG: I thought it was interesting watching, from Manifold Paradox to New Bloom, how your approach to designing live events for the community changed [you can read more detailed thoughts about said events here, for what it's worth. - Ed] Manifold Paradox was controversial for being the first event that brought new mechanics inside the regular Dota game. New Bloom moved away from that. Was that a case of trying it and finding that it didn t work?

"We still feel that, fundamentally, our strongest form of communication is software."

EJ: Everything that we do like that, we re just poking at something specific to see how it works. We re not technically running a science experiment, but we have ideas—like what if there was an additional level alongside the things that are going on in everybody s day to day Dota matches . How do we fit that into the experience? How do we build new content around an event that exists for everyone, rather than being something separate? That was the impetus behind that. I believe it tied into Oracle—we like building stories and depth into those heroes and making that all make sense for people.

We got a bunch of good data from it and then we did a more traditional event around the Lunar New Year. But so much of our focus has been on getting Reborn up and running and that was something that we were doing without talking. It wasn t very out in the open for a long time. We weren t making huge investments publically in events as we have in years past because we were pretty invested in Source 2.

PCG: I remember a post written in the aftermath of the Diretide that didn t happen, that said this is how we re going to change how we communicate . There seems to be a little bit of tension in the way Valve communicates between that openness and the desire for those big reveal moments. There are times when it s a case of silence, silence, silence, silence, then suddenly something new. Does that all-or-nothing difference need to be smoothed out a little?

EJ: We still feel that, fundamentally, our strongest form of communication is software. You can discern everything we ve done and everything we re thinking by reading through an update. We think that there s some amount of value in just surprising the community with something you didn t think was coming and we wouldn t want to lose that. But we hear when people are saying that we do a poor job at communication and some of it s an artifact of the type of company that we are. I think sometimes it turns to what I feel is a place that s not super accurate, like Valve doesn t care . We care a huge amount about our users and our community.

PCG: There s an orthodoxy for community management among people who run online games. Valve is really different. There s no video person who s in front of people every day.

EJ: Exactly. I guess we just take a different approach. Instead of a community manager, the person that you re going to hear from at Valve is somebody who is working on the game every day. There s a currency of time that we re all investing into our products, and we could either be getting what looks like community management or we could be working on the next hero and it really is that kind of tradeoff.

In our heads we re constantly saying, fundamentally, what do I think I could add the most value to? But the question really is, what does the community want me to work on today? If we told everybody what we were doing, would they say oh, that s the right thing to work on ? That s how we re testing the decisions we re making. When an artist s saying 'I could make a blog post about what happened last week, or I could start sketching out what Pit Lord s going to look like' they say 'I think people just want me to make Pit Lord.'

PCG: There s a certain degree of trust on both sides there, right? You re trusting that you know what the community will respond best to, but you re also asking the community to trust that that s what you re doing. They don t have that information. There s no sense of even how big the Dota team is or what day-to-day looks like. That s the flipside. Do you think that you need to let people in a little bit more, or simply refresh that trust from time to time?

EJ: It comes up often enough that certainly it s something that we need to look at.

"We certainly don t want to come in and enforce our set of rules."

PCG: Something that seems to have not come up for a while is player behaviour. There was a bunch of different approaches to the report system and—must be more than a year ago now—some data about how it affected things. Is that something to return to post-Reborn? Because that s one of Dota s problems, as a piece of software—people. Is that something that should get more attention?

EJ: It s not something that currently bubbles up super high, at least in terms of what we see in terms of feedback. But there are people at Valve who look at that problem almost continuously.

PCG: For the platform as a whole? For Steam?

EJ: For Dota also. Matchmaking and behaviour in Dota have a pretty strong relationship. So the same people look at those problems all of the time.

PCG: We talked about community management in terms of PR, but it also concerns how the community talk to each other, the language they use—is that something you feel that you can wade into? It seems a point of tension with the notion that the community is always right. Sometimes they are calling each other names.

EJ: I think the community s reasonably good at policing itself when it comes to the type of language they use. We certainly don t want to come in and enforce our set of rules. If the community rallies around a certain set of things that they want to make happen then we re happy to write the code that makes that come true. We have access to a bunch of data that s useful for us in terms of measuring how those things are being done inside of the game, so maybe our view on it is a little bit... we think more accurate.

Surely people get angry and say bad words when they play games of Dota, especially when they lose, but as a whole, if you walk around this event…

PCG: ...people are nice in real life.

EJ: We fundamentally love our customers and our community. We re not really willing to go to the place where we feel that we need to make a bunch of decisions about the content they create for each other.

PCG: Related is the newcomer experience. It s something that you ve experimented with two years running at this event and in terms of the game itself. Dota s other big problem is its accessibility. How has your approach to that changed? You did the first spate of tutorials a year and a bit ago. You re doing new ones for Reborn. What was the thinking behind that?

EJ: It was a little bit of hey, let s go back and revisit this and tinker with it . Dota has a lot of users so its accessibility actually seems pretty great. People tend to play the game and keep playing it for a really long time. I think, fundamentally, people come into Dota 2 the same way they did with DotA 1—one of their friends is playing Dota and they want to play games together, and that s how they get into the game. But, especially around the International, we cast the net pretty wide because there could be a bunch of people who want to try it out and see if it s the thing for them. The training maps, that s their goal.

Same as the new player stream that happens with the event. The audience for that might be a bunch of people that just want to show, say, their parents. Clearly there s no strong business motive for Valve to get a bunch of parents to watch Dota when they re probably never going to play it, but there is a bunch of value in a bunch of fans feeling good about the product that they care so much about. Does that make sense?

PCG: That s an interesting angle. Speaking to you before, and speaking to others from Valve, I understand that you serve the audience that you have. But what if you want somebody else to join that audience, somebody who doesn t already have a channel into it?

EJ: As with any problem, you want to make it the simplest possible problem. Valve want people to play Dota. They re only going to do that if they re having fun. If they re not having fun they re going to go and do something else because entertainment time is hard to come by. We don t make our world super complicated— what region should we go into where we think a certain percentage of users would be playing Dota? What s the demographic of our users? We re like, how do we make a bunch of people happy . That s really all we re trying to do. With this event, it s how do we make the people who come here super happy . When people are playing Dota or using Steam or playing Counter-Strike: how can we make our existing customers super happy so they tell their friends, hey I m super happy come play this game with me .

"There s this pull towards a bunch of short-term good, long-term awful decisions."

PCG: Does that allow you to take a longer view? I was wondering if you d seen a lack of growth because of the lack of landmark updates during the time that Reborn has been in development. The rate of new hero additions has dropped off dramatically over the last couple of years, from 13 in 2013 to three last year, one so far this year. In other games those things are done specifically because it gets the game back out in front of people again. Do you feel the need to compete in that way?

EJ: We re still growing pretty well in terms of users. We were at eight and a half million users this time last year and we re at eleven and a half million this year. Again, like, it s data that tells us that we re pushing things forward but we re not driving at some magic number and we re not driving towards growth. I feel like—let s just keep making people happy and keeping them entertained, because that s a hard enough problem—to convince someone to spend some of their very limited entertainment time on a thing we built.

You asked if this is the long play on things? I hope so, because everything we do at Valve, that s how we try to approach it. We ve always felt like there s this pull towards a bunch of short-term good, long-term awful decisions that are just sitting there waiting for people take all the time. We re sad when we see other companies do that. As long as Valve s been around, our decision has been to just do the long-term thing. That s the company we want to come in to work at every day. Not some silly short-term decision being made.

PCG: Finally, Pit Lord. Question mark?

EJ: It d be awesome if Pit Lord was in the game. I don t actually know, though.

PCG: Fair enough. Valve things.

EJ: Looking forward to those five-man teleports, though.

Still hungry for Dota 2 hot takes? Check out Three Lane Highway.

The Dota Major Championships were announced back in April, but details were sparse. Now that the "fall" event is closer, we've got more information, specifically that the first Major will take place in Europe in November. There'll be another tournament in winter and spring, and then the International next summer.

If you want to attend, you'll have to wait for further information on tickets, though the blog post from the Dota team says they'll be available soon.

If you want to enter the tournament you'll want the Open Qualifiers, which any team can enter and which will take place between October 6 and 9. Two teams from each region will then be invited to enter Regional Qualifiers, which will take place between October 10 and 13. Some teams from the Regional Qualifiers will then be invited to take part in the Major. Registration is here.

At each stage some teams will get invitations without having to qualify through the previous stage, and these will go out on October 5. If you think you're part of this category, then make sure you don't change your roster after September 5 or you'll have to enter the Open Qualifiers like everyone else.

You guys really love hard games, or at least, you love whichever game you remember as the hardest. In my latest survey, I asked respondents to rank the hardest game they've played on a scale of 1-10. Over 40% scored their most challenging experience a 10, and 70% scored it an 8 or higher.

You also love a lot of different hard games, and have different ideas about what makes a game 'hard.' Among 2,660 respondents, the top game cited as the hardest they've ever played was only mentioned 385 times—around 14% of the total. (Actually, one person wrote in SEGA Bass Fishing 1,006 times, but I've cut that from the results, along with several variations of "your mom.")

What's the hardest PC game you've played?

Unsurprisingly, Dark Souls got the most mentions, with 14% saying it was the hardest game they've ever played. It was followed by Dark Souls 2, which took in about 5% of the results. From there, though, the results are immediately diverse, with shooters, platformers, puzzle games, strategy games, and MOBAs all bunched together. When I cut out jokes, console games, games with specific caveats, and those that received only one or two mentions, I was still left with over 70 games. (Here's my curated list of the top 77.)

The top 10, naturally, are the most popular hard games—and games that are arguably best known for being hard—so the results actually get more interesting the deeper into the list I go. At number 11, for instance, you'll find I Wanna Be The Boshy, a fan game based on number six, I Wanna Be The Guy, an intentionally difficult tribute to early platformers.

Further down (and I'm skipping around a bit), we find StarCraft II, STALKER, Insurgency, Alien Isolation, Kerbal Space Program, the Touhou series, VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, SpaceChem, Dustforce, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and, of course, Bad Rats, a notoriously awful game which has accrued a positive rating on Steam, because ironic Steam reviews are all the rage.

It's good to see the Touhou Project's bullet-hell games earn some mentions. We recently published an introduction to the series, which is currently being localized by Playism.

VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce, and SpaceChem all come recommended (I don't think I ever made it past Vogarr's first stage, though). I did expect to see a few more puzzle games. One game no one mentioned, I presume because it's newer and a bit more niche, is TIS-100. It's made by the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, and might be one of the most challenging puzzle games I've played (though it's presumably easier for experienced programmers, and anyone who paid more attention in school than I did). Print out the manual if you can.

Choosing difficulty

All of the games I mentioned up there can easily be described as 'hard,' if for different reasons. Against skilled opponents, CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2 are very hard, and they're complex. Dwarf Fortress and Kerbal Space Program require a lot of learning. Super Hexagon, and the bullet-hell games and platformers, require precision control.

But plenty of games which aren't known for being hard can be very hard. The Witcher 2, for instance, came in at 19, in part due to its permadeath mode and first boss. Those damn RC missions from GTA: San Andreas also came up. Civilization V on Diety difficulty, too.

In the survey, I asked which difficulty setting (based on four generic settings) the takers were most likely to choose when starting a new game. The distribution is about as I expected: almost no one takes the easy route, the most people (39.8%) leave it on the normal difficulty, and slightly fewer choose the hard (28.7%) or the hardest modes (26%).

Broken mice and broken bones

When asked to tell us the worst thing they've done to express frustration with a game, plenty said that they don't react physically—they curse, uninstall the game, go outside, or do other healthy-sounding things. "[I] stopped playing for few months to get over my anger and hopefully renew my interest," said King_Matt. A calm and wise king is Matt. We can all learn from the great King_Matt.

And apparently, a lot of us need to. The word "broke" came up 222 times and "smash" was included in over 100 responses. Banana peels came up an awful lot, too. Here are a few examples:

I chucked my keyboard at my brick wall. It dragged the desktop with it. It corrupted my hard drive, broke my keyboard and most functions on the case didn't work properly. - Abernath

Thrown a banana peel out the window. But I picked it up later. - Kenu

I once got so frustrated while just trying to get fuel up to my ship [in Kerbal Space Program] that was trying to get to Mun that I decided to fly all my rockets into Kerbol (the sun). I spent about 5 hours just designing the booster/fuel ships to help get my whole fleet there and give them the last push into its blinding embrace. Once every single one was burned to ash, and all the crew with it, I deleted the save and went to bed. It was only after I woke up that I realized what I had done. To say the least, I cried. - Nerd__Guy

 Threw my lamp out the window. It was a damn good lamp too. - Anonymous

Literally ripped out a chunk of hair in frustration once. - Nate Dogg

I actually broke my grandfather's trackball mouse while playing when I was a kid on his PC. I had to buy him a new mouse from Walmart. - Brain

Threw more money at it. This is a recurring theme with me in multiplayer games. - Ryan Daniels

In my grandest fit of frustration, I suppressed my volatile feelings with the warm, cheesy comfort of Hot Pockets. A lot of them. It turns out one man can eat a lot of Hot Pockets. They come out a lot faster than they go in. - Chudbunkis

Threw a banana peel at the screen. - As7iX

Broke a finger. - Dodie

So is Dark Souls really that hard?

I predicted that Dark Souls would be the most popular game in the survey, so I added an extra question. I asked everyone, regardless of which game they put down as the hardest, to agree or disagree with the statement "Dark Souls isn't even that hard, ugh." I think we can all agree that I chose an extremely unscientific way to phrase the question, but we definitely can't all agree on whether or not Dark Souls is hard. 

This appeared last week according to the Dota 2 store date, but it's worth highlighting in case you missed it. Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon's animated TV comedy duo now have a Dota 2 voice pack. Rick and Morty banter, voiced by Roiland, replaces general announcements and megakill announcements and can be bought from the in-game store for $7.99. It was added to Steam for voting a couple of months ago with the above teaser video. The Mr Meeseeks courier has yet to receive enough support to make it into the main game. Poor li'l guy.

Couriers and cosmetics can struggle to pass Valve's art rules (which might be why Mr. Meeseeks hasn't made the cut). Voice packs are a really neat way of bringing bits of pop culture into Dota, though. What next, Bojack Horseman?

Ta, Gamespot.

I first watched competitive Dota during the second International. I'd been playing for a few months, and didn't understand enough to follow the tournament properly. My abiding memory of those first experiences was watching the draft: particularly the moment when a team would select a hero, the portrait would flash up on the screen, and a crowd of people on the other side of the planet would go wild. It was baffling, almost off-puttingly so, but I wanted to understand it.

Competitive games always develop their own secret languages—it's not something unique to Dota 2 or even this genre. But drafting sits aside from even these. Learning to parse the drama of a character selection phase is something that comes after picking up basic understanding of the game itself. It requires a knowledge of every character, their strengths, the strategies they fit into and the players they're associated with. It requires knowledge of past results, the current metagame, the history of the competitive scene, and so on. Not all of that knowledge needs to be perfect, but as with any language the more fluent you are the more you understand.

A little over three years later, the pick-ban process has become one of my favourite things about Dota. I'm not sure how unusual that is: it's the precursor to a much more involved and complex game, a phase that you're likely to fast-forward through if you're catching up on a replay. Only a small portion of the playerbase opt to play Captain's Mode regularly. For me it's become its own game, antecedent to Dota proper but interesting, and strangely playable, in its own right.

Drafting feels a bit like a competitive card game from the future. It's the part of Dota that hews closest to Calvinball—and this is game that has an awful lot of Calvinball in its DNA.

For example. EG remove Bounty Hunter and Tusk; CDEC remove Leshrac and Techies. EG first pick Gyrocopter and CDEC take Clockwerk and Lina. EG get Naga Siren, then remove Ember Spirit. CDEC get rid of Dark Seer. EG get rid of Visage. CDEC ban Shadow Fiend then take Winter Wyvern. Storm Spirit to EG, then Phantom Lancer to CDEC, then Earthshaker to EG. CDEC remove Crystal Maiden; EG remove Dazzle. Down to the final two: Dragon Knight for CDEC, Ancient Apparition to EG.

This is either complete nonsense or the dramatic opening moments of the final game of the International 2015. It's probably a little bit of both. Over time however, and exposure, you see the stories contained in every choice. The way EG's Bounty Hunter ban reflects their growing respect for the hero, the way it upset them in the upper bracket final, its gradual ascendance over the course of the event. CDEC's Techies ban, which echoes with the sound of Aui_2000's explosive performance in the group stages (and KuroKy's back at ESL One, arguably.)

The respect shown to Universe with the Dark Seer ban and, likely, the Clockwerk first-pick; similarly, EG's respect for Q's Visage. The confidence in SumaiL expressed by that third-pick Storm Spirit, the shore-up-the-defenses mindset expressed by Phantom Lancer and Dragon Knight. The reason people cheer at hero selections is because they express personality, emotion, and strategy: the thing you see, when you learn to read between the lines, is people, which is a good way to explain the popularity of esports as a whole.

What strikes me is that even spectating a draft phase is, to some degree, participatory. It's fun to apply your own understanding to the draft happening on the screen, to anticipate decisions, share that anticipation, and so on. This is a part of the game that is fundamentally about pattern recognition, but rare in that the patterns you trace go beyond game mechanics and strategy. You consider social, personal, historical patterns too: you are using the part of your brain that might in a different life be forecasting financial trends, or branding, or fashion. Whatever life decisions led you apply these faculties to internet wizards don't matter: you are, at least, using them.

It's the satisfaction of applying years of knowledge knowledge and intuition in combination, simply and keenly expressed—something few games outside of the competitive world manage. For all that gets said about esports being inaccessible, I suspect that the complexity of a hero draft is emblematic of why they're becoming so popular. It's common to assume that a viewer will encounter something they don't understand and turn away: those cheers during the draft are evidence that the opposite is often true. Secret languages are attractive—they draw people in, make them want to learn, and reward them for learning. I can't think of a better demonstration of that than thousands of people screaming at a character select screen.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

After a poor showing at The International 2015, the Cloud9 Dota 2 team has been officially disbanded. Word of the split came first from Rasmus "Misery" Filipsen, who Gamespresso reports revealed the news during a livestream.

Filipsen didn't go into detail about the breakup, saying only, "I can't say anything more than that. It's for the better, guys." But fellow Cloud9 member Jacky "EternalEnvy" Mao effectively confirmed the news on Twitter, where he posted a link to the Cloud9 Dota 2 poster from The International and wrote, "In memory of the old C9 roster. Please note that any player on the poster may not be in C9 next DotA Year."

Cloud9 had a rough couple of days at The International earlier this month, where it was quickly knocked out of the competition with an 0-2 record. The team fell first to CDEC and then to Vici Gaming in a match Chris Thursten said "felt as if C9 had forgotten that they were up against some of the very best, most coordinated support players in the world."

The breakup of the roster does not mean that Cloud9 is out of Dota 2 for good, however. "Yes, Cloud9 will remain in #Dota2," team owner and manager Jack Etienne tweeted. "I'll miss our old team but I'm excited to create our new squad. TY EE, Misery, Fata, Bone, & BigDaddy!"

The remaining members of the team—Pittner "bOne7" Armand, Adrian "Fata" Trinks, and Johan "BigDaddyN0tail" Sundstein—have not yet publicly commented.

Cloud9 remains one of North America's biggest esports organizations, with teams for CS:GO, League of Legends, Hearthstone, and several other games.

Dota 2 matchmaking is a strange place to be in the aftermath of an International. There are a lot of new players, a lot of returning players, and a lot of people trying to imitate what they've just seen play out on the world stage. I'm fascinated by the way these influences interact with the existing habits of the Dota population.

International grand finals have an impact on Dota matchmaking equivalent to the release of a new Arcana or Immortal cosmetic, which is telling because one of those is a million-dollar tournament featuring the best players in the world and the other is a special hat. Regardless, this impact is shaped by the kinds of things the average Dota player is already interested in: i.e, playing core heroes, usually a midlaner or a farming carry. Of the heroes that really shone at the International, supports like Rubick and Bounty Hunter have actually been picked less since the tournament ended; meanwhile, Storm Spirit, Gyrocopter, Leshrac, Phantom Lancer and other cores have all seen growth (massive growth, in Storm's case.) The best place to observe these shifts is on Dotabuff's hero trends page.

Dota was ever thus. That pubstomping heroes are popular is one of the game's fundamental patterns, like blaming other people or spamming '> We need wards' when anything goes even slightly wrong. Your average player just wants to build the big items and make the big plays. Everybody else works around it. That's how things are, and how they'll always be.

There's a single, massive, totem-swinging exception to this rule, and it's Earthshaker. He's the only support in the top 10, and only Storm Spirit has seen a bigger spike in popularity. The inference is clear: the Dota community just watched Universe land a $6,000,000-dollar Echo Slam in the TI5 grand final, and that's been enough to rocket a support hero up the popularity food chain.

To put it another way: Universe slammed CDEC so hard he altered the nature of reality.

I'm really happy about this. I love that this play is being interpreted as the moment the International was won, because it's a moment orchestrated entirely by a gold-starved support and a utility-focused offlaner. In a metagame that often revolves around on aggressive carries and snowballing midlaners, that it was PPD and Universe who pulled off such a massive upset is a timely reminder that Dota is a team game and that every role offers opportunities for glory.

CDEC's Roshan attempt began with a well-coordinated kill on SumaiL's Storm Spirit, and the assumption from both the casters and (presumably) the players is that this opened up Roshan for an uncontested kill. The logic is that without their supremely talented midlaner, EG would have to either concede the Aegis of the Immortal or try to drag the encounter out long enough for SumaiL to respawn.

PPD and Universe proved that assessment disastrously wrong, and didn't need the rest of their team to do it. Fear threw a Call Down into the pit after the fact, but it wasn't necessary: four members of CDEC were dead after Universe cast his follow-up Fissure, with only agressif surviving on half health. It was a perfect play, entirely conducted by the bottom third of the farm priority pyramid (Aui's Naga Siren can be safely considered to have moved up somewhere beyond position 3 by this point, as often happens when EG run the hero.)

They're not the only players to do something like this, of course. Zai was the Dark Seer that Secret needed in their darkest hour; DDC's Winter Wyvern was the hero that sent Secret to the lower bracket. fy's Rubick remains, for many, the single best hero-and-player combo of the entire event. Supports matter. Supports win games. Everybody who takes Dota seriously knows this, in one sense or another, even though it can often be hard to parse from Dotabuff's metrics or from the average pub game.

This truth is rarely expressed visibly enough to influence the people playing Dota 2 every day, but that's what has happened here. That this moment occurred in such an important match in front of so many people is brilliant for the community. If only 3% more players are deciding to play support as a result of it, that's still more than were volunteering for the role before the tournament.

The dream is that the trend sticks: that this dunk-to-end-all-dunks was somehow so impactful that the people you solo queue with will be falling over themselves to play position 4 Earthshaker. Honestly? I'm not hopeful on that front. The sudden rise of Storm Spirit demonstrates that the majority of eyes are still on mid, on SumaiL, on the starpower connotated by a tough 1 vs. 1 and the snowballing power that follows. Pudge will ever be on the rise, seemingly in step with the growing popularity of the game as a whole. But there's no better reminder that skill and playmaking impact is available to everybody on a Dota team. It might have been a disaster (read: 'diiiiisaaaaaaasterrr') for CDEC, but it was a triumph for everybody else.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

It s over! After six days of competition, the International has its champions. Here s what happened on that amazing final day. Highlights in the sidebar once again, but seriously: watch the entire grand final.

Lower bracket final: Evil Geniuses vs. LGD

A surprise Enigma pick led to an electric first game of the final day. LGD countered with Earthshaker and Silencer; EG clearly had some kind of plan for it. It may well have been that this plan amounted to 'Aui_2000 is very good at Enigma'. A dead-on first blood attempt on SumaiL was abruptly turned against LGD by Aui s sudden arrival, and from there EG slowly started to roll out map control and a farm advantage. LGD are a phenomenal team, however, with one of the world s best strategists in xiao8. A few successful smoke ganks and a disastrous fight for EG evened the game out and established the danger posed by Silencer s Global Silence.

EG struck back with their own pickoffs and LGD.MMY! was forced to deploy Global Silence defensively—the opening that the Americans needed. Facing Maybe s thundering Storm Spirit, EG s PPD and Universe were able to prolong fights with amazing Shallow Grave-Snowball mutual saves. Game down came to crushing teamfight after crushing teamfight, with buybacks and huge plays on both sides. EG.Aui_2000 held a Black Hole through an entire siege in order to counter Storm Spirit; LGD attempted a heroic push down mid but gradually, dazzlingly, EG outplayed them.

EG marched into game 2 with momentum and one of the best drafts I ve seen this tournament: Leshrac—LGD are so afraid of Aui s techies that they let it through—with Clockwerk, Winter Wyvern, Clinkz and Aui s Visage. LGD s draft was standard for this meta: Gyrocopter, Earthshaker, Rubick, Shadow Fiend, Tusk. They recognised the threat posed by EG.SumaiL on Leshrac and killed him twice within the first four minutes. Then, EG.Fear s Clinkz got aggressive very early, threatening LGD s cores across the map. They simply weren t ready for the veteran carry to leave his lane so early. This was a game of highlights: Universe s amazing escape at 12 minutes, MMY! s stolen Winter s Curse at 26 minutes that completely remove EG s gold and experience advantage.

It ran late. It got tense. LGD moved into Roshan and EG flanked to contest them. The ensuing fight was fierce and mutually destructive, with EG forced to back off and their captain, PPD, stranded on the wrong side of the river as Winter Wyvern. Juking through the trees, he got away and dragged LGD.MMY! s Rubick out of position as he rushed to secure the kill. EG closed the trap; Universe landed the hook of his life on Maybe s fleeing Shadow Fiend; the game opened up to EG. With a final incredible fight on the top lane, EG took the game, the set, and became the first ever American team to reach the International grand finals.

The Grand Final: CDEC Gaming vs. Evil Geniuses

After EGs loss to CDEC the day before, EG.PPD called CDEC.Q a genius . This means something coming from EG s famously unfiltered captain, and spoke to the respect that EG had for their opponents. EG s fans were hoping: I hope PPD has a plan.

EG had identified that their loss had been due to their inability to deal with Bounty Hunter, and so they banned it over the now-traditional Leshrac. This was a gamble, based on a hunch that CDEC didn t actually want to run Leshrac but didn t want to play against it either. Of the toppest of the top-tier, EG took Gyrocopter and Storm Spirit for themselves and gave Leshrac, Winter Wyvern, Phantom Lancer and Queen of Pain to CDEC. CDEC focused on punishing SumaiL in mid, killing him three times to open the game. But losing mid is a situation that EG invite and are surprisingly good at fighting back from. On the safelane, Fear s Gyrocopter got all the farm he needed. On the offlane, Universe s Clockwork reached a fast level 6.

With a 3-0 turnaround at 6 minutes, EG started to push back against CDEC s early aggression. They anticipated multiple attempts to pick off individual heroes with smoke ganks, scoring three further 3-0 teamfights between the 10 and 20 minute mark. SumaiL came back despite his bad start to build the fastest Orchid Malevolence at TI5. Universe played absolutely extraordinarily, as did Fear and Aui_2000 on Skywrath Mage. PPD was the only member of EG to feel the heat in the lategame, but he was playing Crystal Maiden—that sort of thing happens to Crystal Maiden.

SumaiL s Storm Spirit is rightly feared and the end of game 1 demonstrated why. My last note reads simply SUMAIL IS EVERYWHERE : think that episode of Futurama where Fry has too much coffee, but with a 16-year old thunder god.

Q, however, is a genius. EG rolled into game 2 with the same plan (why wouldn t they?) but, with SumaiL focused in the banning phase, a Windranger in the midlane. CDEC countered with a mid Broodmother on CDEC.Xz, a rare draft that EG were taken totally off-guard by. This time, they ran Leshrac as a carry rather than as a support and found far more success with it. This time, the pressure was applied to EG across the map rather than just in mid, forcing them onto the defensive and giving the Broodmother the type of space she thrives in. They underestimated CDEC.garder s Tusk, too, with Snowball and Ice Shards causing a lot of problems for EG in teamfights. Moving CDEC.agressif away from the safelane didn t slow him down, with a flawless offlane Queen of Pain performance—10 kills, zero deaths, 12 assists by the end of the game. EG found themselves outdrafted, outlaned, and outplayed.

Game 3 might have been the best Dota game played this year. EG anticipated CDEC a little better in the draft, picking up SumaiL s hero earlier (Ember Spirit) along with Clockwerk, Gyrocopter and another Skywrath Mage. CDEC once again took Leshrac and once again swapped it into a different position, this time mid. They surprised everybody with a final pick of Slark, once of agressif s best heroes.

A dramatic first blood counterplay by SumaiL led to a fantastic display of Dota by both teams. EG got aggressive but were rebuffed, with a run of fights going heavily in CDEC s favour despite one or two pickoffs on the Leshrac. CDEC.Q s Visage tore EG.Fear apart early, and the Chinese team pulled ahead on gold. Then, at 20 minutes, SumaiL things: dodging Visage s Familiars with his ult, single-handedly turning a bad situation for EG into a 3-1 victory and a 2k gold swing. The game settled into a long, cagey standoff, as both teams prodded the other to make a mistake and neither did. CDEC.agressif lived up to his name again with daring dives and a willingness to 1-on-1 Fear s Gyrocopter—and the ability to come out ahead.

The game exploded around the 50 minute mark, first with a fierce fight around Roshan and then with another on the Radiant offlane. EG forced a run of buybacks, but then lost several of their own trying to force their way into CDEC s base. A few minutes later they tried again, but caught CDEC also trying to push across the map. The resultant fight took place backwards, with EG chasing CDEC into EG s own territory—but it was a magnificent fight for EG, particularly for SumaiL but also for Universe s Clockwerk. And with it, EG found themselves one game from the title.

In game 4, CDEC finally conceded the Leshrac ban, opening up one of EG s most feared supports: Naga Siren. They paired this with Gyrocopter, Storm Spirit, Universe s offlane Earthshaker, and a rare PPD Ancient Apparition. CDEC got their own run of favourites: Clockwerk, Lina, Winter Wyvern, Phantom Lancer, and Dragon Knight.

All three lanes went well for EG from the start of the game. CDEC s supports couldn t find Universe s camp-blocking wards, giving him the good start that an offlane Shaker badly needs. They hadn t drafted to kill SumaiL in mid. On the safelane, Fear had room to farm. Then, at just before the 9 minute mark, both teams chose to smoke gank the other at the exact same time—but EG had a highground positioning advantage and the resulting fight ended with a double kill for SumaiL. EG went hunting for kills from this point, willing to commit ults to single pickoffs if it meant staying ahead. Meanwhile, however, CDEC.agressif s farm went uncontested: and his Phantom Lancer is one of the reasons CDEC reached the grand final.

CDEC started to find kills on SumaiL, but it didn t seem to dampen his confidence. PPD landed Ancient Apparition s global ult, Ice Blast, on garder s Lina in the jungle. It looked like an inconvenience—a throwaway play. Then, from nowhere, SumaiL: and another kill for EG. Another EG smoke led to a triple kill for Universe despite heavy casualties, and another fight afterwards went EG s way: but CDEC were still farming, and were still ahead. At 28 minutes, they scored a beautifully-coordinated kill on SumaiL, chaining their disables carefully to stop him from escaping.

Feeling unthreatened, CDEC went for Roshan—and EG countered with the play of the series, the tournament, and possibly the year: a Ice Vortex/Ice Blast/Echo Slam combo that devastated CDEC in seconds. It was bone-and-morale crushing. Meanwhile, a split-pushing Aui_2000 cleared out CDEC s outer towers. The next major fight, at 36 minutes, took place in the Radiant jungle. EG took casualties early but SumaiL fought back hard, turning it 3-1 in EG s favour with agressif dead without buyback. ShiKi s Dragon Knight was forced to flee into the trees with his town portal scroll on cooldown. EG saw their opportunity and stormed into CDEC s base, taking another fight at the foot of the Dire base, retreating, and then striking back hard in midlane. There was no repelling them at this point.

Evil Geniuses defeated CDEC Gaming 3-1, becoming the first North American team to win the International. Fear, who was featured in Free To Play—the documentary about the first International—finally got his title. PPD, Aui_2000 and Universe shook their second-place curse. And SumaiL, a 16-year old from Pakistan, achieved the highest accolade in professional Dota—and a share of $6.6m—within the first year of his career. This is as close to a fairytale finish as the International has ever seen.

But it s important not to forget CDEC, a young team who had to fight their way into the International by first the qualifiers and then the wildcard, the longest possible road. They didn t drop a game on the main stage until they faced EG in the final. They are resolutely a force to be reckoned with, the new giants of the Chinese scene, and I m confident that they ll be back. As much as second place has to sting, what they ve achieved is extraordinary.

Afterwards, deadmau5.

Spoilers! Spoilers! Spoilers! If you don't want to know who won the International, look away now.

...

Did I mention that there'll be spoilers? Good. Let's continue.

After an incredible day of play at the end of an amazing week, EG have emerged as the greatest Dota 2 team in the world. These North American fan-favourites started a great year with a win at the Dota Asia Championship but have failed to seize very many titles since (until now.) Their victory today over CDEC will mean a huge amount to the team, particularly to EG.Fear who competed in the very first International five years ago, but has never lifted the trophy. Credit  They take home more than $6.6m and the knowledge that they're the very best.

This has been an amazing tournament. You can find all of PC Gamer's daily coverage right here. Check back later for a more thorough report on the best of the final day.

It's the big day: after a week of competition, two teams will face off for The International 5's $6.6 million grand prize. Watch The International 5 in the stream above to catch the finale (and cross your fingers that no one DDOSes the tournament again today).

If you're really excited about The International but have no clue what's going on in Dota 2, never fear: you can watch and enjoy, too. Check out the newcomer stream on Twitch, which offers friendlier commentary for Dota newbies. 

If you want to know what matches are happening when, check out the schedule and match bracket on the International site.