I spent much of yesterday and today watching Captain's Draft 4.0, a major Dota tournament, and the first one I have really watched since TI7 in August. Dota has come so far in the time I have followed it, it's nuts. If you exclude TI, the biggest tournaments "back in the day" had $30k prize pools and that was a huge deal, people would take those exceptionally seriously, and CD4 has a $300k purse for what is as close to a meme tournament as you could get. The format is great for entertainment value for viewers but almost certainly terrible for professional teams trying to win, a lot of the analysis panels are spent just doing bits, the casting is hilarious but a lot of the time they are not even talking about the game (in the last game I watched, the casters had a 10 minute discussion about the strategy behind rock paper scissors). It's amazing, and I'm so happy Dota has come this far in the last 6 years, but even for me it is insane someone is putting up $300k for this glorious trainwreck of a tournament.