A local news outlet in New Zealand recently conducted an interview with Gabe Newell and he revealed that DOTA2's The International might be coming to the Kiwi shores. It is a very "realistic possibility" according to the co-founder of Valve.

Interview conducted by Luke Appleby (@lukeappleby on Twitter) for TVNZ. Please read the original article as that includes extra pieces about his citizenship, 'Citadel', and valve employees moving to New Zealand.

Last year we reported that the Dota2 International would be delayed until 2021. At the time we knew that the prize-pool would be combined for the 10th International tournament and it is up to a record-breaking $40million USD.

Luke Appleby (for TVNZ) asked Gabe Newell about hosting torunaments in New Zealand and his reply was as follows:

How do you do tournaments? Is New Zealand the only country in the world that you can do Counter-Strike or Dota tournaments safely? As long as COVID keeps mutating it certainly is increasing the likelihood that we will be having events here [in NZ].

Literally could not, if I had to guess when it would be safe to do an in-person tournament anywhere in the world it would be very hard for me to say that, whereas I think with a lot of confidence you'd be able to plan for that in New Zealand. Hopefully the procedures can be put in place so that becomes feasible, so you know this is what the quarantine looks like. It's a realistic possibility and gets more realistic all the time.

This is coming off the announcement last week that PGL will be hosting the next Counter-Strike major in Sweden in October and November. The announcement was shrouded in warnings about the fact that it would only go ahead if the global pandemic situation surrounding COVID was under control and they were confident in hosting the event in Sweden.

The International 2021 is still pencilled in for it's usual dates in Late August, so we are only 7 months away from the scheduled start-date and still have no confirmed news about a location or if the tournament will even be going ahead or not. It is expected after having to miss out on the 2020 tournament, that Valve will make it a priority to make sure the 2021 event is able to be run.

Again, please read the original article on TVNZ that includes extra peices about his citizenship, 'Citadel', and valve employees moving to New Zealand.