Mentioned in this article
- Dota Underlords, Valve’s new Auto Chess-inspired game, will hold its first offline tournament at ESL One Hamburg 2019.
- The €5K ($5.7K USD) tournament will be open to all attendees of ESL One Hamburg’s main Dota 2 event, which has a $300K USD prize pool for pro teams.
- Dota Underlords is based on the popular Dota Auto Chess mod for Dota 2, which was developed by Drodo Studio and will be spun out into a standalone, competing game.
October’s ESL One Hamburg 2019 
tournament for Dota 2 will also feature the first offline tournament for Dota Underlords , Valve’s new spinoff game based on Drodo Studio’s Dota Auto Chess mod.
The €5K ($5.7K USD) Dota Underlords tournament will be free for all attendees to join, with more details to be announced ahead of the ESL One Hamburg finals, which take place from Oct. 25-27.
ESL One events are typically focused on a single game, but in this case, the Dota Underlords tournament is being treated as a side activity to the main event. The Dota 2 tournament itself has a $300K prize pool, and will feature 12 pro teams along with an array of sponsors including Intel , Mercedes-Benz , Vodafone, and DHL.
Dota Underlords is Valve’s official take on the “auto-battler” strategy game genre that began earlier this year with Dota Auto Chess, a third-party Dota 2 modification created by Drodo Studio. Valve and Drodo began negotiations to collaborate on Dota Auto Chess as an official Dota product, but could not come to terms on an agreement.
Related Article: Drodo Studio and ImbaTV to Host $1M Auto Chess Invitational in Shanghai
As such, Drodo Studio will spin the PC modification out into a standalone Auto Chess game, which will be available via the competing Epic Games Store rather than Valve’s Steam platform. Android and iOS versions of Auto Chess are already available. On Friday, Drodo Studio announced that it has partnered with ImbaTV and Long Mobile to host a $1M Auto Chess Invitational tournament in Shanghai this October.
Riot Games has also come out with its own take on the genre called Teamfight Tactics, which is available as a new mode for League of Legends via its Public Beta Environment (PBE).
