Dota 2 legend Danil “Dendi” Ishutin summed up the mood of the scene in one post this weekend. “orgs leave Dota one after another”, he wrote late on 8 November, adding “7 teams out in 6 months”. The post passed 120,000 views within a day, and it closed with a list of joke fixes, from “big fancy arcana’s” to a “super secret shop” and “Pudge buffs”.
The numbers behind the joke are real, because since June two former world champions and five other organisations have left Dota 2, released their rosters or paused their divisions.
It is a striking list for a game that is more popular than it has been in a decade. Dota 2 reached 1,096,364 concurrent players on 25 October, its highest peak since 2016, as we reported in our story on the player count, second only to Counter-Strike 2 on Steam’s most played chart that day. Valve has kept the game busy with events, a Tidehunter Arcana and regular balance patches. None of that activity, however, has made it easier for the organisations that field professional teams to pay their bills.
Every Dota 2 organisation that has left, disbanded or paused since June
Dendi did not name the seven teams, and any count depends on whether pauses and roster releases are included. The list below covers the organisations that left the game, disbanded their Dota roster or put their division on hold between June and early November. It matches his number exactly, without counting the exits from earlier in the year.
| Organisation | When | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Tundra Esports | June | Stopped fielding rosters in every game and became a media brand, while its Dota players moved to 1win Team |
| Vici Gaming | 16 August | Disbanded its roster straight after a 9th to 13th place finish at TI 2026 |
| REKONIX | 19 August | Released its roster after missing TI 2026 |
| Virtus.pro | 24 August | Released its international roster after missing TI 2026, but says it will stay in Dota |
| Team Falcons | 6 September | Left Dota 2 a year after winning The International 2025 |
| Nigma Galaxy | September | Roster split without an official announcement, and the players formed Conventus Stellarum |
| BetBoom Team | 2 November | Paused its Dota division after two early exits, saying it is not leaving for good |
The departures began even earlier in the year. Team Secret, one of the most famous brands in the game, announced an indefinite hiatus in February, with founding captain Puppey moving into coaching. In April, paiN Gaming left two months after returning to Dota, pointing to “long-term viability” and “structural challenges”. HEROIC followed on 4 May, releasing a roster that had been competing well, with reports citing financial constraints.
The two biggest names on the list say the most about the problem. Tundra, which won The International in 2022, said on 4 June that it had “no plans to field or sign rosters in any esports discipline”. Team Falcons, the TI 2025 champions and winners of the 2025 Esports World Cup Club Championship, said farewell on 6 September after what it called a “strategic review”, citing “long-term operational sustainability”. Falcons had kept the same five players together since November 2023, which makes the decision even harder to read as a reaction to results.
Why the money in Dota 2 esports no longer adds up
The clearest change is at the top of the calendar. The International 2021 paid out more than $40 million, most of it raised through Battle Pass sales. After Valve scrapped the Battle Pass in 2023 and ended the Dota Pro Circuit after that season, the prize pool collapsed, and TI 2026 in Shanghai offered just over $3.3 million in total. Team Spirit took home about $1.4 million for their third Aegis, while the teams finishing seventh or eighth left with roughly $134,000.
Prize money is also mostly the players’ money. Organisations often take only a share of winnings, so even a deep TI run rarely covers a year of salaries, bootcamps, travel and staff. Direct invites also tend to follow a team’s players rather than its brand, which is why Tundra’s TI 2026 slot moved with its roster to 1win Team. An organisation can spend years building a squad, only to watch the asset walk out of the door.
The wider tournament economy has its own problems. FISSURE, which runs Dota 2 and CS2 events, admitted this month that it still owes prize money to teams and players, and is targeting early 2027 for its next large repayment. Several of the biggest clubs, including BetBoom Team and 1win Team, carry the names of betting brands and are widely seen as marketing for their parent companies. That model is under pressure as well, as Singapore’s rules on gambling brands at the PGL Major showed last week.
A booming Dota 2 player base with a shrinking pro scene
Dendi’s suggestions were tongue in cheek, but they point at a real gap. Valve has poured its effort into the game itself, with new heroes, cosmetics, events and patches, and players have responded in huge numbers. What it has not offered since 2023 is a structure that gives organisations predictable income, such as a league with revenue sharing or a protected place in the calendar. Riot’s partnership leagues in VALORANT and League of Legends offer some of that, although even there clubs walk away, as Global Esports showed in VALORANT in October.
Some of the remaining teams are betting that patience will pay off. Virtus.pro has said it is staying in Dota 2, LGD Gaming and Xtreme Gaming are rebuilding, and OG is reshaping its roster around Natsumi and Skem. BetBoom’s chief executive has also insisted that its pause is not a goodbye, and four of its players will continue under the name Do Konca. BetBoom had been due to play ESSENCE III, BLAST Slam IX and DreamLeague Season 30, and replacements for its first two slots had not been named by 3 November.
