As Dota 2 tournament at the Gamescom 2011 heats up, the end of the giant game event will be followed by the beta release of Dota 2, starting from an invitation-based service moving to a public beta.

The beta signup for Dota 2 has already begun on the Dota 2 website.

Dota 2 Tournament's Dazzling Awards

Wednesday at Gamescom, Valve kicked off The International, a five-day long Dota 2 tournament, giving gamers an in-depth peak into the upcoming strategy game for the first time.

Running all week through till the championship round on Sunday, the tournament is richly hosted with streaming video featuring live commentary in multiple languages (Chinese, German, Russian, and English), team bios, detailed match scoreboard, and a thorough rundown on the heroes used in each DOTA 2 match.

You can watch the live game HERE.

Replays of the past matches are uploaded on Dota 2's Youtube channel.

The International features the 16 best Dota teams in the world competing in the Dota 2 Championships through a group stage, double elimination playoff format, says the website.

The prize distribution for the top teams is quite impressive:

1st place: $1,000,000 USD

2nd place: $250,000 USD

3rd place: $150,000 USD

4th place: $80,000 USD

5th place: $35,000 USD

6th place: $35,000 USD

7th place: $25,000 USD

8th place: $25,000 USD

What is Dota 2 And How Is It Developed?

According to Dota 2 blog, the game began as a user-made modification for Warcraft 3 and has grown into one of the most played online games in the world.

Following in the tradition of Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Portal, and Alien Swarm, Dota 2 is the result of Valve hiring the community developers who built the mod and giving them the chance to finally build a full product out of their idea with the help of a professional team of developers and artists at Valve.

While the official release is now eyed for launching in 2012. according to Euro Gamer, while Dota 2 will be distributed through Valve's own platform, Steam, the company is yet to decide on a business model.

We don't have a plan, said Valve boss Gabe Newell. IceFrog has a bunch of testers he's worked with as long as he's been doing development. The first thing we've been working with is addressing their concerns. We've been through four or five different versions of the user interface, getting it to the point where we've addressed the feedback we've got from those guys.

Project manager Eric Johnson has mentioned in Gamescom that Dota 2's spectating, coaching and matchmaking features could become Steamworks components for use in other titles.

Well, we look at everything we do, we like to first experiment on our own products, and this [gamescom] tournament is an example of that, Johnson told Digital Spy.

For us now, this tournament is a really good step. A bunch of the features we're building in the design of Dota 2 related to being able to put on a tournament like this. There's a bunch of stat stuff. There's a bunch of website development, support for simultaneous, four-language broadcasting, said Newell.

Watch the trailer of Dota 2 here:

Beta