LoL's 5M vs. Dota2's 1.7M

In response to the 1st Dota 2 Championship prize pool of almost 2 Million US dollars, Riot gives Valve a playful slap in the face by announcing that League of Legends second season championships will have a 5 Million dollar prize pool. And I though the Dominion announcement was enough to keep them living on, this move just set themselves a permanent fixture of e-sports, rivaling even Starcraft 2. While the lack of observer and replay features still makes me believe SC2 is the superior e-sports, once they implement these features, they might become the premier scene.

This doesn't take anything away from Valve, though. The 1.7M USD prize pool is not to be scoffed at—and this happens on their first tourney. Riot's announcement might make their next ones even bigger.

Related to this, some Dota 2 screenshots were released. While the graphics of the game itself look very polished, I cannot say the same for the user interface. Hopefully this will change or at least be moddable. We will actually get to see it in a couple of days time.

Trailing further behind is S2 Games. While there's a new hero for Heroes of Newearth, I don't think simply adding more of them will help if they want to become actual contenders of the competitive gaming scene. And I believe they must do something even more drastic than free-to-play to actually compete against Riot and Valve. Again, what's your move?