ESWC adds DotA to its pool of RTS games

There were initial speculations as to the presence of DotA at this year's ESWC. Worry no more, as the committee has recently announced picking up DotA as one of the games to be played at this year's ESWC, which is set for 21-25 October.

This is the third year DotA is included in this prestigious tournament held in Paris, France, with a total of $220,000 in prizes to be awarded. Singaporean team Zenith and Chinese powerhouse EHOME clinched the gold back in 2008 and 2010 respectively.

The reason behind the committee's choice was due to the "keen interest shown by the DotA community during the ESWC 2011 announcement" which strengthened the committee's resolve to have DotA included in this year's event. The multiplayer RTS rounds off the list of previously published individual RTS games.

With the confirmation of DotA at international LANs like ESWC, WDC and SMM, and with international teams already expressing their interest in participating, it looks like DotA is here to stay in the world of E-Sports.

An interesting thing to note is that the publisher for DotA is listed as Valve instead of the usual Blizzard on their announcement page. However the official game list page lists the publisher as Blizzard. Could it be that DotA 2 will be released between now and ESWC?

Links
ESWC Homepage - Additional RTS Announcement
ESWC - Official game list