An Indian-Pakistani duo win $6.6 mn just by playing video games

Saahil Arora and Samuel Hassan, the Indian-Pakistani video game duo are living every teenager’s dream. Saahil Arora along with his five member team, Evil Geniuses, has won the top prize at Valve’s eSports competition ‘The International’ with total prize money of $6.63 Million.

The competition involved one-on-one fights in Defence Of The Ancients 2 (DotA 2), a popular eSports game and the Evil Geniuses won the competition by beating 18 other teams from around the world at the Key Arena in Seattle.

176 games played, 18 teams, 11 days and 1 Aegis. These are your #TI5 Champions! @EvilGeniuses pic.twitter.com/mFmt63WT7c

— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) August 9,

2015

Samuel Hassan, his Pakistani teammate, is originally from Pakistan and lives in Rosemont, Illinois. Arora and Hassan helped his team win $1.2 Million prize at the DotA Asia Championship this year before coming to Seattle and lifting the all important trophy.

In Pakistan, Samuel had to sell his bicycle to play DotA and his sacrifices seem to have reaped immense benefits with this prize money which is even higher than other international sports events including the Cricket World Cup, The Tour De France and the Masters.

The winnings are crowd funded by Valve, the company which develops the game DotA. The team had tough competition from CDEC gaming which beat them easily in the group stages. Evil Geniuses had their revenge when they beat them 3-1 in the grand finals.