For those who might have missed the most important news from the past week in the competitive Dota2 scene, here is a short recap.

Tournament news:

Team Liquid are crowned champions of the StarLadder i-League Season 3

Team Liquid battled VG.J over the SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 title and a potential direct invite to the Kiev Major. Find out what happened in the bo5 series here.

The Kiev Major Open Qualifiers will be region locked

With The Kiev Major quickly approaching, information regarding a region lock for the Open Qualifiers has come to light.

Amongst these changes, Milos Nedelljkovic, from FACEIT, gave us a breakdown of the region locking feature which will be implemented for these Open Qualifiers. This region locking will be to prevent teams playing outside their home regions – making it a lot more interesting and fair in the greater scheme of things.

Moonduck announce a new tournament format: Midas Mode

The exact dates, teams attending and even the tournament rules are still being worked on, but one thing is sure: The Midas Mode will run after the Kiev Major. The rules in very big lines are saying that each participating team will start with a sum of virtual currency named MoonBucks (MB). MoonBucks will be used for everything a game might need. Each picked hero will cost a sum of MB, so do the banned heroes. Each pause will cost MB. The hero costs will fluctuate from game to game depending on how impactful they prove to be.

OG join Evil Geniuses for The Manila Masters

Announced a week ago by the Mineski-Events Team, The Masters is a brand new tournament which will be held this May in Philippines. Along with the official announcement of the event from last week, Mineski-Events has also revealed the first direct invite going to Evil Geniuses, followed by OG. A total of five teams will receive a direct invite to the event, leaving only three spots available for the qualifiers.

Registrations for Gamers Lounge WinterCup III are now open

The first official eSports organization in Egypt, the Gamers Lounge, are about to kick off their third edition of WinterCup with free registration for all the Egyptian teams interested to test their strength in a competitive environment.

The registration form can be found HERE, and before committing to the tournament, make sure you read all the rules posted HERE.

GLWC III format:

Qualifiers: 

  • Registrations are open until 5th of March
  • Participants must be residents of Egypt
  • Single elimination bracket
  • Top 32 advance into the playoffs

Playoffs

  • Single elimination bracket until Round of 8
  • LAN Finals on the 8th of April
  • Double elimination bracket
  • Prize pool: EGP 25,000

Team announcements:

Prodota Gaming to play Major Open Qualifiers once again

After playing with a few stand-ins for the last couple of months, Prodota Gaming welcomed back an old friend of theirs, Alexandru 'ComeWithMe' Craciunescu, who will be playing the fifth support position. For the mid role Prodota, introduces us to a new face, Micke 'mICKe' Nguyen, a 17 years old Swedish player who only recently switched from Heroes of Newerth to Dota2.

Prodota Gaming current roster:

Ylli 'Garter' Ramadani
Micke 'mICKe' Nguyen
Evgeniy 'chshrct' Kostroma
Aydin 'iNsania' Sarkohi
Alexandru 'ComeWithMe' Craciunescu