Valve's $18 Million Dota 2 Competition Knocked Offline by Hackers

The International, a competition for the widely-popular online game Dota 2 was knocked offline early Tuesday after hackers sent a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack, taking the $18 million cash prize with it. The massive world tournament organized by the the software company Valve, was brought to a screeching halt during the morning of their second day.

The International Dota 2 tournament began on Monday at the KeyArena in the Seattle Center. Of the roughly $18 million jackpot, $16.4 million was contributed directly from Dota 2 gamers themselves. The sheer size of the prize pool has marked The International as the largest e-sports tournament to be held.

During the competition, just as things started to get heated in match one of the best-of-three competitions between teams Evil Geniuses and compLexity Gaming, the game suddenly began to lag heavily and was put on pause. As hackers knocked Valve’s The International offline, Dota 2 analysts confirmed on Twitter that the DDoS attack set them back around an hour in total.

Officials noted that since Dota 2 matches at The International are played via the public internet, not a local network, the tournament was prone to a cyberattacks. Often at competitions all of the gamers will be connected to a local network, isolated from the possibility of outside attacks, but Valve took a different approach, loading up their $18 million competition on Wifi.

According to PC World, The International game has begun, yet just hours ago the Livestream was still displaying a still image. However, gamers have reported that the The International Dota 2 livestream is back up and running again.