Good news for all you DOTA fanatics.

Erik Johnson, the project manager at Valve Corporation, has revealed to PC Gamer that DOTA 2 will have the much needed LAN support that every pro-gamer needs. For those that don’t know, LAN (or Local Area Networking, a way to connect PC’s to each other) is an integral part of multiplayer competitive gaming. A more recent trend for newer games is to utilize online connections to facilitate matches, which then depend on the quality of the connections to have those matches play flawlessly. When those connections are overloaded, matches have to stop just so the connection can stabilize. And while many newer and popular games have dropped LAN support (StarCraft II, for example), a majority of games still have it as an option (such as the Call Of Duty series).

Though, implementation of the LAN support and the systems that require it isn’t finished right now, “…mainly because we’ve been focused on matchmaking. We know how important this feature is for the community…” says Johnson.

It’s nice to know that Valve is truly supporting DOTA and the scene surrounding it.

In other news, Valve are also planning more tourneys in the size of The International, which was featured a while ago to showcase the game and their support of the DOTA pro-gaming scene. These future tournaments will be sponsored by Valve, and surprisingly, all travel costs/expenses for the teams who are invited will be completely furnished by Valve (which is also what happened to the teams invited for the first International Tourney). To gain an invite, Johnson says that  pro-gamers should “play in Dota tournaments and perform well. We’ve all been watching every tournament that we find internally, looking for what teams we think should be invited.”. With a prize pool that is estimated to be “$1.6 Million Dollars“, the next International Tournament is set to be hosted in Seattle, Washington, close to where Valve is headquartered.