The PGL has been selected by Valve, developer and publisher of Dota 2, to host the Dota Pro Circuit for the Southeast Asia region for the next two years. The PGL will oversee a prize pool of $280K USD with competition starting Jan 18.
As far as the format, the SEA region will see its best eight Dota 2 teams compete in the upper division of the circuit. In order to get to that eight, four teams will get direct invites while another eight compete to fill the other four slots.
TNC, Fnatic, T1, and Boom Esports are the teams with direct invites, and 496 Gaming, Team SMG, Execration, Smart Omega, Vice Esports, Galaxy Racer, Cignal Ultra, and Neon Esports are the teams competing in a series of qualifiers for the remaining four spots.
The eight teams will see two stages in closed and qualifiers.
Stage 1 will see the eight teams play a double-elimination, best-of-three bracket to determine four winners. Those teams then qualify for the upper-division and the bottom four teams will play in the next qualifying stage.
Next, 12 teams will compete in order to reach Stage 2 of the closed qualifiers. The bottom four teams from the closed qualifier Stage 1 will compete with eight teams that qualified for this portion from open qualifiers. There will be four open qualifiers and the top two teams from each qualifier will compete in the closed qualifiers Stage 2.
Stage 2 sees teams playing in two round-robin best-of-two groups of six teams each. Group. The teams that finish fifth and sixth place are eliminated and the remaining teams will qualify for the lower division.
With the upper and lower divisions now intact, a round-robin bracket will be created for each upper and lower divisions. These matches will be played in a best-of-three format.
According to the announced format, the bottom two teams of the upper-division will be relegated to the lower division, while the top two teams of the lower division will be promoted. The bottom two teams of the lower division will be eliminated from the league and Open Qualifiers will decide which are the two teams that will occupy these slots in the next season.
The top three teams of the SEA Region will earn a slot for the next Valve Major.
