The first wave of tickets, made available earlier this afternoon, sold out in record time.

The eighth annual Dota 2 International Championships will be held August 20th thru 25th at Rogers Arena, Vanouver, British Columbia. Last year's event, held at Seattle, Washington's KeyArena, offered a record-setting prize pool totaling over $24 million.

The International was launched in Cologne, Germany during the 2011 Gamescom. It featured 16 of the world's most elite Dota 2 teams competing in a group stage, double elimination playoff format for a grand prize of over $1 million.

Since 2013 the prize pool has been bolstered beyond Valve's contribution by Dota 2 community participation in special interactive events such as the Compendium.

Dota 2 is a free-to-play, online action strategy game created by Valve (Bellevue, WA based makers of multiple game franchises and the leading online distribution platform, Steam).

This year's tournament will again be broadcast worldwide, free of charge, with play-by-play commentary in multiple languages.