For the first time in Dota 2 history, no Chinese team qualified for the top eight of The International, Esports Insider reported. Xtreme Gaming, Vici Gaming and Team Resilience were all out of TI15 before the playoff bracket, at an event held on home ground in Shanghai.
How the three went out
Xtreme Gaming was directly invited to TI15, ahead of teams including Team Spirit and TEAM VISION, and then bombed out of the group stage with a 1-4 record, losing to Team Spirit, GamerLegion, LGD Gaming — playing with a last-minute stand-in — and Team Resilience. The organisation finished second at last year's International.
Vici Gaming arrived as the highest-ranked Chinese team after a top-four finish at the Esports World Cup, but went 2-3 and lost in the elimination stage. Team Resilience, widely written off before the event and picked 0-4 by many fans, also exited in the elimination stage, but took maps off TEAM VISION, Team Yandex and Team Spirit and dealt the blow that knocked Xtreme Gaming out of the 1-3 pool.
A region in decline
Esports Insider's column argued the result was expected rather than shocking, describing a region that has been sliding for several years and reached an all-time low in 2026. It pointed at circumstances around the teams as much as the scoreboard. Xtreme Gaming's coach Zhang "xiao8" Ning left the team mid-tournament during the season, handing drafts to his assistant, and was later confirmed to be out altogether, forcing a coaching change shortly before TI. After Team Falcons eliminated Vici Gaming, the team's owner posted "GG, disbanded" less than an hour later without elaborating.
The same players, a decade on
The column also set out a generational problem. Vici Gaming's Zhang "Faith_bian" Ruida and Zhang "y`" Yiping won China's last Aegis at TI6 ten years ago and are still competing. Xu "fy" Linsen, active since 2013, came out of retirement to play the season with Xtreme Gaming. Ame, the region's most prominent carry, has lost three TI grand finals, each of them in a game five.
Esports Insider attributed the absence of replacements to Honor of Kings, the mobile MOBA booming in China, which needs only a phone rather than a gaming PC or internet café time and, by the column's reckoning, perhaps fifty hours to play competently against the thousands Dota 2 demands. Its conclusion was that the region is not dying immediately, but that no obvious successors to the current roster of veterans have emerged.
