Will there be a Battle Pass for TI14?

The Battle Pass for The International used to be an annual tradition, starting all the way from the TI3 compendium back in 2013. The yearly custom has since fallen by the wayside, with Dota 2 publisher and developer Valve Corporation discontinuing the Battle Pass with TI12 in 2023.

Why did Valve stop making Battle Passes?

Valve made this decision two years ago with the aim of spreading hype throughout each competitive season, rather than having all the in-game goodies focused entirely on The International. To that end, they significantly scaled the Battle Pass back starting with TI12, where they stopped calling it a Battle Pass in the first place and went back to simply calling it the International Compendium.

The TI12 edition of the Compendium retained much of the functionality of its predecessors, such as the Fantasy Challenge and the myriad tournament predictions that would reward correct guesses with additional levels. What was sorely missing though, were the many, many high value hero cosmetics from Battle Passes of old, which were undoubtedly the biggest draw each year.

Since then however, The International’s prize pool has taken a significant dive, with TI12 offering around $3.4 million and TI13 offering even less at $2.7 million. This is a stark difference to TI10, which to this point is still the single most lucrative event in professional gaming history at $40 million.

Will there be a TI14 battle pass?

In a word: doubtful. For one, there isn’t long left until TI14 starts. So unless Valve have actually been working on it secretly throughout the year there’s just not enough time for them to cook something up before the tournament begins.

Secondly, it just doesn’t seem like Valve are ready to basically admit that they were foolish to discontinue the Battle Pass in the first place. They had a vision in mind when they stopped making Battle Passes to begin with, and I’m not too confident in their willingness to turn around on that.

Lastly, and this is important: Valve is a company that does not answer to shareholders. The company is 100% privately owned, and are not publicly traded on any stock market. They also have a flat corporate structure where anyone is free to work on whatever they wish, whenever they wish.

Therefore, if the people working on Dota 2 over at the Valve HQ simply decide that a TI14 Battle Pass isn’t worth the time, money, and energy… well, that’s that, unfortunately.

And honestly, even if they did, Steam alone generates billions in revenue each year, and maintaining Steam is just way, way easier than trying to get the creative juices flowing every International.

“But that Crownfall, tho”

Yes, I absolutely hear you on that. If Valve won’t put out a Battle Pass for TI14, I would at least hope for another event like Crownfall, which was archived back in February. Or, better yet, they could bring back Aghanim’s Labyrinth to tide us all over.

Valve could even have the proceeds from such events funnel into the TI14 prize pool, just like with the Battle Passes from 2022 and earlier. I don’t think it’ll cause the pot to swell to $40 million again, but I feel like the money on offer at the most prestigious event of the season could stand to grow to something between $5-10 million with enough cosmetics baked into these events.

Until they decide to either surprise us all with an actual Battle Pass or a Crownfall-like event though, all we can do is wait. That, and watch the Dota 2 page on SteamDB like hawks, hoping that one of these days we’ll see an update.