Valve announced it has canceled the 2021-22 Dota Pro Circuit Winter Tour Major due to health concerns and travel restrictions created by new COVID-19 variants.
The first Major of the year, it was due to end the Winter Tour of the current DPC season with international players traveling to compete in an undisclosed location.
“As the Winter Tour of the Dota Pro Circuit 2021-2022 season draws to a close, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel the first Major,” Valve said in a statement. “While hopes were high that we could host an international LAN event, the discovery and spread of new strains of COVID-19 and the resulting increase of travel restrictions has made it unfeasible for all qualified teams to gather for a LAN tournament.”
The Major will not be rescheduled and the DPC points will be redistributed across the remaining two Majors in 2022.
“As there will be no major, Tour 1 will conclude after all of the regional league tournaments have ended,” Valve’s release continued. “Players who have participated in Fantasy will receive their rewards before the start of Tour 2.”
Team Secret’s Syed Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan was among those to voice displeasure at the decision to cancel the Major.
“If all the teams decide to just not compete in season 2 at least we will have some sort of stable system, either better communication or maybe dota just dies completely,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Either way better than the current state of things.”
The points structure for the remaining two Majors.
Major 2
1st Place: 520 Points
2nd Place: 310 Points
3rd Place: 210 Points
4th Place: 105 Points
5th Place: 52 Points
Major 3
1st Place: 680 Points
2nd Place: 410 Points
3rd Place: 270 Points
4th Place: 135 Points
5th Place: 68 Points
“Why is the Major’s prize pool and points not distributed at least partially to the teams that are qualified/would qualify?,” Quincy Crew’s Remus “ponlo” Goh Zhi Xian tweeted. “Flew to the other side of the world to play DPC & won, and yet I’m probably gonna make like $2k usd for the whole season after expenses.”
BOOM Esports responded to Valve’s announcement with a simple tweet of, “P A I N.”
–Field Level Media