After the recent release of the 7.06c patch, Valve has now announced the Short-Film Contest for this year's International as well as some experimental changes to Ranked Matchmaking.
Valve has continued the tradition of the Dota 2 Short Film Contest for the International 2017 also. Passionate filmmakers from around the world will, like the players, also be battling for a prize pool of their own with Valve having set prizes for the top ten short films submitted. Similar to last year, the first three prizes will be $25,000, $10,000 and $5,000, while the rest of the seven entries that made the top ten will be given $500. As we've seen time and again, the Short Film Contest really shows how talented the Dota enthusiasts filmmakers can tend to be, as we saw multiple awe striking entries for the 2016 contest, with "Lanaya is Mine" stealing the show.
An interesting change-up from previous years is that this time the length of the Short Films have been increased from 60 seconds to 90 seconds, allowing artists to be more creative with their content. Fans are in for a treat, as they will be the ones who will determine the winners of the Short Film Contest by voting on the entries in the Workshop, and also vote upon the top entries of the contest from their Battle Pass.
In other news, Valve also rolled out another update which has made two major impacts in Dota. The first change is that All Pick in Ranked Matchmaking will have 25 heroes randomly removed from the hero pool before the ban phase. With a lot of players with relatively small hero pools, this change is expected to heavily impact the course of Ranked Matchmaking for a short while, however only time will tell whether the community welcomes this change or opposes it. The second change has increased responsiveness in-game and has worked to prevent mishaps resulting from fast fingers, especially on heroes like Puck and Earth Spirit.
The International 2017 Coverage HUB
Click here for results, VODs and all the other information
