Over the course of Gamescom 2011, IGN was running the People's Choice Award, giving you the chance to vote for your favourite game of the show - whether you were there in Cologne or not.

Altogether, 258,367 votes were cast - which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is a LOT of people. Incidentally, this makes IGN's People's Choice Award officially the world's largest videogame awards, which we're very pleased about.

It was a hard-fought battle, with five or six different games on top at one point or another in the show. There were 25 candidates, but there can only be one winner, and the eventual victor was... *drumroll*

...Valve's DOTA 2!

Dota 2 Championships: First Public Showing at Gamescom

Valve today announced The International. This tournament will be the first time Dota 2 is shown in public, and will take place August 17th -21st at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany.

The International features the 16 best Dota teams in the world competing in the Dota 2 Championships through a group stage, double elimination playoff format over the course of Cologne’s five-day trade show.

The tournament will be broadcast in four languages (Chinese, German, Russian, and English) free of charge. The winning team will receive $1 million.

“The International is the first public Dota 2 event and will give the tens of millions of gamers playing Dota around the world their first look at the new game,” said Gabe Newell, president and founder of Valve. “I have had the good fortune to watch the competitors as they prepare for the tournament, and the level of play is extraordinary.”

In addition to the cash prizes awarded by Valve, NVidia is providing all the hardware for the event.

Dota 2 will be available for the PC and Mac later this year.

So, what do we get by these new findings? Let's see!

First of all, we confirmed new Heroes!

Razor
Pugna
Zeus
Faceless Void
Shadow Shaman
Crystal Maiden
Shadow Priest
Storm Spirit
Venomancer
Dragon Knight
Enigma
Bounty Hunter
Moon Rider
Omniknight
Queen of Pain
Centaur
Ursa
Skeleton King
Storm Spirit
Tiny
Mirana
Puck
Yurnero

Also, we learned another interesting thing! The names that will be replacing the Scourge and the Sentinel are going to be Dire and Radiant.

You can find the whole updated list of DOTA 2 Heroes that have, one way or another been verified, here.

Once more the live match streaming service called DOTA TV is verified and apparently a lot of tweaking and debugging going on with it and the spectator mode. From what one can understand the "spectator" mode in DOTA 2 will play a really important role in the game and it will, as everything shows, be available with the release of the game.

Most, if not all, of the items have appeared in the changelogs. Not a surprise, but nice to know that they are verified. At the same time another pleasant verification was the neutral creeps that, apparently will even have the same names and abilities.

I don't know about you guys, but with all of this and the hope that VALVe will announce DOTA 2 at the GamesCom of 2011 I am really excited!

At the same time, we are waiting today for the BETA opening of the JoinDota.com website! Let's see what TobiWan will show us for this new shoutcasting website!