The North American open qualifiers for the 2018 Dota 2 International were off to the races yesterday, with dozens of games being played to determine who would take a regional spot. And then along came a patch containing Dota 2's new battle royale mode, and everything fell apart.

The open qualifiers for the upcoming Eleague Boston Major have been marred by a number of issues, including a sudden spree of cheating bans. Several players have received bans mid-match for supposedly using cheating software to gain an edge on fellow competitors.

Dota 2 uses terrain height in a unique way: depending on the distance, it can cause attacks to miss, provide a vision advantage, or in this case, trap an enemy player on a cliff for a long, long time.

The regional qualifiers for the next Dota 2 major have been exciting, with over 100 matches played in the last 48 hours. The Kiev Major boasts a prize pool of $3 million, and so everybody and their grandmother has been competing to earn a spot, including one team that made a desperate move to somewhere in the…

The qualifying system for Dota 2's majors has its roots in an egalitarian impulse where—theoretically—a team of amateurs could win an open and then regional qualifier, and find themselves competing in a major against professionals. But for the upcoming Kiev Major, that egalitarian has ran smack dab into the reality of…

The invites for the next Dota 2 major in Kiev were announced today. Eight teams receive a direct invite to the tournament, while a mixture of regional invites, Battle Cup Champions and the winners of the open qualifiers will fill out the field.