This weekend, Dota fans the world over were treated to Vici Gaming’s domination at the Star Ladder 12 LAN finals. This long-standing tournament has seen a lot of growth in its recent iterations. Prior to its eighth season, the format had remained the same: 16 European teams, each playing a best of one match against the other 15, concluding with the best four teams getting invited to the finals. The tournament has since gone international, including qualifiers for America, China, and South East Asia. While those regions’ qualifiers have undergone some changes, the Euro division had remained traditional: 16 teams, top four advance, and team worth decided by the outcome of its round robin format. Recent outcry from the professional community, however, has driven this go-to format to the edge of extinction.

Before we dive into how it has been ingrained into the professional culture of Dota 2, let’s take a look at the logistics of round robin itself. The core concept is a clear one—everyone faces everyone else. From an organizer’s point of view, it is the simplest way to find out who out of a pool is the strongest. There is no ambiguity, no chance of having a rough schedule, no matter of preference. Numbers don’t lie, and when everyone has the same road to travel on, who finishes first is quite clear. The problems arise, however, as to how long it take to reach the road’s end, as well as how interesting it is to watch each team’s journey. As more teams are involved in a round robin pool, the more total games have to be played.

Consider the Star Ladder Europe scenario. You have 16 teams, all of which are varying levels of experience and strength. A round robin pool involving all 16 would yield 120 total games. Scheduling these games becomes an issue, and with each game usually taking anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour, it’s a lot of time to allot for scheduling. Star Ladder’s only choice was to have each meeting between teams be a one game affair, and packing in anywhere from three to seven games per day. That’s a LOT of Dota to schedule, cast, and play. Over time, however, it was definitive as to who performed the best in the group. After all, it is clear that a 12-3 team is certainly better than a 3-12 team.

But what about teams that finish close to one another? How much better is the 12-3 team than a team that went 11-4? How much worse is the 3-12 team than a team that finished 4-11? We can look at the head-to-head results, but even then using the Star Ladder example, it’s a single game. Maybe one team had played four games prior to their defeat, or hadn’t played a professional game in over a week.

Another problem exists with how attractive a match is to watch. Everyone wants to see the big boys butt heads. Teams like Secret, Empire, Virtus Pro, and Alliance put on show and pull out the stops when they face another prominent opponent. But when they face a lesser known team, they don’t want to blow all their strategies, so games can end up uninspired or clowny. Likewise, when two unknowns square off, fan bases tend to be more anemic, and viewership suffers.

Despite these drawbacks, no system is perfect, so the round robin system was adopted as the format of choice for nearly every tournament for two years. Events from the early days. like first seasons of D2L and The Premier League, and more recently The Summit 2 and MLG Pro League season 1 have used the format to great success. The drawbacks, however, brought about exhaustion for the players and things boiled over when Cloud9’s Eternal Envy posted his own “state of the game” blog on LiquidDota detailing his grievances with casters, tournaments, and live events.

This served as a wake up call for organizers in the European and North American scene. Since the conclusion on the Dota Asian Championships in early February, the qualifier and LAN final formats have drastically shifted. The Summit 3 and MLG Pro League season 2, and Red Bull Battlegrounds have ditched the round robin format for pre-qualifiers for a more impactful, yet forgiving double elimination tournament format. Star Ladder chose to preserve the old round robin format, but leverage the meaningfulness of each game by splitting each region’s pools into groups of four, and staging miniature round robins within the smaller groups. The smaller groups allowed each meeting between teams to be a best of three match, rather than the single games of seasons’ past. Also absent are round robin play at the LAN finals themselves, which proved invaluable for gauging strength for multi-regional participants. The Summit 3 and Star Ladder 12 chose to ditch these, taking a nod from ESL One’s random seeding into an elimination bracket. Even across the pond, Chinese tournaments such as VPGame Pro League, WCA, and ECL Spring have converted to Star Ladder’s group play into a playoff bracket.

Are the days of the gargantuan round robin qualifier over? The big announcement from Valve on Friday of the Dota Major Championships sparks hope for the endangered format. Valve-run events like The International and the Dota Asian Championships have used the format extensively. With the increase of these sponsored events to four a year, will Valve choose to continue using round robin? Or will their exclusion finally drive the once dominant and proud format into extinction? With the details of this year’s International under a week away from reveal, the future of the format may very well be at an end.