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The original was posted on /r/dota2 by /u/eagle2120 on 2025-06-16 17:12:29+00:00.
Hi Everyone. I wanted to make a follow-up post from my one in December, talking about the journey since then, and what our recent TI Qualification means to me and for NA Dota. As always - these opinion are my own, and do not reflect or represent Wildcard in any way.
I’m not really sure where to start, so I’ll start from the beginning. 2013, watching my first international. Sitting in bed for Game 5, after my parents kicked me out of the computer room when I yelled too loudly and woke them up during Game 4. My friend, CJ, texting me updates every few minutes on the game; I was living and dying with every teamfight through 160-character messages.
My parents didn't understand why I stayed up so late on a school night to watch a video game, why this stupid video game tournament mattered so much. But it mattered because The International was a culmination of this game I loved - this impossibly complex game that few understood, and even fewer had mastered - was real. That somewhere in the world, people cared about fountain Pudge hooks and aegis denies and Na’Vi as much as I did.
The broadcasting and content creation ecosystem reinforces this hierarchy. TI gets the premium treatment - the best talent, the highest production values, the most elaborate content pieces. For our NA stack, this means their journey from nobody to somebody gets documented and celebrated in ways that would never happen at another tournament. True Sight, player profiles, interview segments - suddenly their stories matter because they're TI stories. OG's back-to-back TI wins from open qualifiers. EG’s underdog championship. “Not wasting Nisha’s career”. These narratives matter forever precisely because they happened at TI.
I’ve recently seen a common sentiment among the community - Is TI still the most important tournament in the world? Why does TI still matter when it’s no longer the biggest prize pool, and Valve is barely involved anymore?
But that question misunderstands what The International has become, why it mattered in the first place.
Every current pro grew up watching TI the way I did - through community streams, through silenced texts late at night, through whatever connection they could find. Year after year, TI reinforced that THIS tournament is where legends are born. Where Dendi became DENDI. Where n0tail goes from thrown-away toy, from Hontrash to two-time champion, one of the greatest players of all time.
The entire ecosystem of professional Dota still orbits around TI. Rosters shuffle after TI. Contracts are negotiated with TI as the "end date". Player values live and die by their TI performance. Win five Majors but bomb out of TI? Disappointing year. Make one miracle lower bracket run at TI? Legend forever. EG's story doesn't happen at a Major. Team Spirit doesn't become Team Spirit at a DreamLeague. OG's back-to-back wins, starting from open qualifiers. These narratives require TI's weight, its history, its shared understanding that this is still THE tournament.
Which brings me to our (and my own personal) journey to The International.
Last August, the Apex journey almost came to an abrupt end.
I don’t say this for sympathy, but to emphasize how close this team was to not being a thing anymore - I was hospitalized after I got a kidney stone; not anything life-threatening, but very painful. However, the point isn’t the hospital visit itself though, it’s the financial fallout from it. We were so close to having to fold it up. If I lost my job, if my car broke down, if any other unplanned financial expense or emergency hit - I wouldn’t be able to fund the team anymore. No safety net. Just… Done.
I need to be transparent: I wasn't as involved these last six months as I wanted to be. While this post is a personal reflection, this accomplishment belongs to the players and coaches and managers and org who grinded while I could only provide partial support. While I was in meetings for work, they were scrimming and putting in all the work to make this happen. While I am writing these words, it is entirely their accomplishment. This is not a self-congratulatory post where I declare how I’m a great owner, how I found the right group of people, or anything like that. I’m not, and I just got lucky. These guys worked INSANELY hard to get to where they are, and it’s all on their backs. But I wanted to write something because I have a unique perspective and insight into the team, and their journey, and it’s incredibly meaningful to me personally. To give you some additional context -
I was trying everything to find sponsors. But professional Dota is in such a weird, zombified state - you either get a top-tier betting sponsor (usually coupled with a large org), a MENA sponsor, or… well, nothing, really. The numbers for small orgs just don’t work for Dota anymore. Big sponsors want established brands and nobody wants to bet on five unknown NA players.
Thankfully, there was one org I’d been talking to for a while. When talks with them started getting serious- and we'd been talking for months - it felt like salvation and heartbreak mixed together all in one. Salvation because the players would finally get some stability from a professional organization. Improved salaries. Security. Everything I wanted to give them but couldn't.
Heartbreak because this thing we started from nothing, these players we believed in, were taking a step beyond what I alone could provide. It's like watching your child leave for college - Incredibly proud and bittersweet and tinged with sadness all in equal measure.
But that's what growth looks like. I partnered with Wildcard, and we went in on a joint venture for this team - I still contribute financially, but the burden is shared and the risk is distributed. It's what's best for everyone, even if it means accepting the transition from Apex to Wildcard, accepting that I couldn’t shoulder everything by myself anymore.
A few months go by … We’re still doing alright. We have yet to beat SR. That makes it, what, seven series in a row? Thirteen if you extend it back through Apex Genesis.Thirteen fucking series in a row. Each loss compounding on the last. After the fifth, you stop making excuses. After the tenth, you question everything. By thirteen, Shopify Rebellion wasn't just a team anymore - they were the ceiling we couldn't break through. Every scrim schedule, every draft discussion, every strategy session had this unspoken shadow: 'But what about when we face SR?'
Head to a few weeks ago - EWC. We were doing well, but not amazing in scrims. I had hope, but not confidence. And then the grand finals… 3-0. None of the games were stomps, but we also lost every one, so it’s copium at best. In addition to the loss (or perhaps, a contributing factor), our infamous veno also got patched out, so we no longer had our draft advantage.
But… something changed with the boys. It’s hard to say exactly what. Over the next few days, we had some help from members in the community (I don’t want to disclose names for privacy, but if you’re reading this, know we’re eternally grateful, and I owe you drinks at TI). While they did help, it was a subtle shift in the way the team carried themselves; the attitude they had during scrims. The nuanced differences in the way they started communicating with each other.
Things started to turn. We always knew we could be competitive with Shopify, but never really felt the confidence to fully beat them. Especially in a BO5. But the scrims we had in the days leading up to TI quals were some of the best Dota we’ve ever played. We were 2-0’ing teams who played in the EU quals.
And then the upper bracket. I knew it would be extremely close, but. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect a 2-0. When we took game one, the team went quiet for a bit. Not disappointed quiet, but disbelieving quiet. We might be able to actually do this. We might be able to actually beat them. When we closed out game two, it was like something finally broke within the team We actually fucking did it. Not won - did it. Like we'd broken some fundamental law of physics. Thirteen series of scar tissue, and suddenly we could breathe. Every team has their unbeatable nightmare. Na'Vi had Alliance. PSG.LGD had OG. We had Shopify Rebellion. The difference was our nightmare lived in our region, in our qualifiers, in our path to everything. You can't become legendary at TI if you can't even escape your own backyard. As the thirteen losses piled up, it was a stark reminder. These weren't just series. Each one of these losses was another reason to add to the pile, another reason why we didn't deserve to dream about Hamburg.
But in the upper bracket, after 13 series in a row, we finally beat them. We finally overcame the spectre that had been haunting us for over a YEAR.
And then came the BO5.
It would take me another 5 pages to write about that BO5 in full, but I want to highlight how we came back from game 4 specifically. It would have been so incredibly easy to tilt and lose game 5, knowing the lead we had in game 4, knowing we should’ve won that game. But Game 5 wasn't just about TI anymore, it was about proving that the upper bracket wasn't a fluke. That we weren't the same team that lost thirteen straight. Every teamfight carried the weight of every previous loss. When Yamsun called for FIRS...
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