Nominal vs present value
Local display: $2.9m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
TI8 prize share. Equal-ish five-player split of OG's ~$11.2m The International 2018 first-place purse.
Other tournament & team pay. Minor additional 2018 winnings beside the Vancouver mega-cheque.
Impact 92
- Anchored Dota 2's reputation as the sport's biggest single-event payday
- Proved a five-man roster could clear eight figures from one tournament
- Set the prize-era benchmark streamer lists later overshadowed
n0tail's TI8 year is still the cleanest competitive counterweight to influencer economics: almost all of the money came from winning the biggest LAN on the calendar. Org salaries grew afterward, but Valve's crowdfunded purse remains the template every Dota contract still shadows.
Johan "n0tail" Sundstein's 2018 peak — roughly $2.3 million from OG's The International title share alone — is pure prize-pool economics. Restated to 2024 dollars it still sits among the largest single-year competitive hauls in esports history, earned without a Forbes streaming stack.