Set to take place in a sold-out Key Arena, the fifth edition of ‘The International’ broke its own record this week when its prize-pool bubbled above the $US 11 million dollar mark after another surge in funding support from fans. That number could balloon to as high as $US 15 million on current trends before the tournament takes place in August - a staggering amount of money indeed.

To put that in context, Golf’s US Masters paid out $US 10 million this year, while tennis’s French Open will pay competitors across both men’s and women’s fields $US 36 million. It’s still nothing compared to an event like Fifa’s World Cup, but it’s a statement for the ‘e-sports’ scene that should rattle more established players.

Dota 2 has only been played competitively since 2011, when Valve hosted the first International, but the game’s seen huge growth in the years since. A free to play game available through Valve’s software client, Steam, what’s remarkable about Dota 2’s success is how much financial supports its rallied for the professional scene and its tournaments through the gaming community.

Case in point, Valve contributed just $US 1.6 million of The International’s current prize-pool with the remainder raised directly through a quasi crowd-funding model. A quarter of the proceeds from the sale of ‘compendiums’, interactive tournament guides, have boosted the prize-pool by more than $US 10 million, and that’s separate to revenues raised through ticket sales to the main event, and through the event’s sponsors.

Valve’s been so taken with the support of the gaming community to date, that it’s expected to unveil three other major tournaments to complement the International throughout the year to foster its burgeoning professional circuit. A recent mid-tier tournament, ‘The Summit’, raised half of its quarter of a million dollars in prizes from fans, while even lesser events are cobbling together six-figure sums.

Meanwhile, Dota is only one game in a vast e-sports scene. Rival games developer Riot’s League of Legends (LoL) may have offered teams a smaller prize-pool ($US 2.13 million) at its own world championship last year in Seoul, South Korea, but still hosted more than 40,000 fans in Sangam stadium for the final, and courted live viewing numbers for the duration of the tournament at 27 million.

Whether the mainstream has anything to fear will probably manifest in the longevity of the support and player base that games like Dota 2 and LoL currently boast. History would suggest that even the most popular computer games tend to have relatively short lifespans - the challenge for games developers like Valve and Riot, is retaining and building on their success in the longer term.