Valve wants you playing at The International 2015

For the first time, The International 2015 – the biggest Dota 2 tournament in the world – will have an open qualifier.

Disclaimer: Valve probably doesn’t actually want you, specifically, at The International 2015. If they did, they probably would’ve sent you an invite directly. I mean, sure, if you do actually play for one of the invited teams, then they do want you! And I’m surprised you’re reading this! But if you’re Joe Public then, well, it’s more a to-the-point way of saying “you can fight for a chance to play there.” To-the-point except that I’ve had to include this really long disclaimer. Ahem.

Anyway: no. It’s more that for the first time, you actually have the opportunity to compete in TI5 without having to be directly invited.

From what I can gather there’ll be an open qualifier in each region, with the winner getting the 10th slot in the regional qualifiers for the tournament itself. This means 16 teams in the tournament itself: 10 direct invitees, four regional qualifier winners, and two wildcards.

There’s currently a countdown with the direct invitees being revealed one by one, which is really annoying for anyone who wanted to go to bed, but not so bad for me because I’m sick and I can’t sleep anyway. The teams heading to each regional qualifier will be announced after that, with the Americas qualifier teams being revealed in 50 minutes, and the Southeast Asia qualifiers being revealed last, in around 95 minutes.

Once all the teams are revealed I’ll write some sort of post about who’s invited and so on, so if you can’t be bothered hanging around, check back here tomorrow. For now, we’ve got Vici Gaming, Evil Geniuses, Team Secret, Invictus Gaming, LGD Gaming, Cloud9, and Team Empire – none of whom are particularly surprising. I suppose the big question is whether or not Newbee will get one of the 10 direct invites, as despite being the TI4 champions, their performance has been a bit lackluster of late.

If you’ve got a regular five-stack that wants to sign up for the open qualifiers, Perfect World are arranging the Chinese ones, and Faceit are dealing with the tournaments for the Americas, Europe, and SEA. If you’re in China and want to sign up, click here; if you’re anywhere else, head over here.

Finally, if you want to watch the countdown clock slowly ticking down for yourself, stroll on over to The International 2015’s announcement page.