Add money to the $1.6m Dota 2 International prize pool by buying a "living" virtual book

You can now add to the already gargantuan amount of money up for grabs at the Dota 2 International tournament by buying a "living" virtual book.

Valve will do this by adding 25 per cent of all the revenue generated by The International Interactive Compendium, a virtual book intended to help fans better connect with the tournament, to the $1.6 million prize pool.

The International Compendium lets you play games with other fans for fun and bragging rights and get virtual item drops as the tournament unfolds. You can vote on tournament-related community polls, and, after the tournament is over, compare predictions.

It will be sold on the Dota Store from today, Valve said (it's not available yet, and Valve hasn't announced the price). If you have a ticket to the International event itself, you'll get a Compendium as a free bonus.

"Each year we spend some of the planning time for The International trying to figure out ways to improve the connection between fans and the players in the tournament," Valve said, explaining the move.

"We know that the majority of our viewers will be watching the tournament unfold over the internet, so we'd like to make it easier for an online fan to dig deeper into the event, the teams, and the players.

"In addition to wanting more detail, we know fans also love to compete with each other at predicting tournament results. This year we're taking our first shot at addressing all of the these concepts, with an additional step that we hope will result in the tournament itself getting bigger and better as a direct result of fan enthusiasm."

The International runs for five days starting 7th August at the Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle.