All the money paid for compendiums is for services provided by Valve. Valve also pays all the taxes that come with this fact, e.g. VAT. Yes they promise to give

All the money paid for compendiums is for services provided by Valve. Valve also pays all the taxes that come with this fact, e.g. VAT. Yes they promise to give 25% of the revenue to prize pools and thus far have done so, but from a legal standpoint it's no different than buying skins in League of Legends. Contrast this to an actual crowdfunding site like Kickstarter which does not pay VAT on the collected money. [1][2] However perhaps you didn't like that my point could be viewed as if Valve is transferring money from non dota related profits to dota. That's of course not true, Valve is a business and profits from dota. I fully admit that and thought it didn't need mentioning. -- [1] https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005139493-Are-creators-based-in-the-UK-and-Germany-responsible-for-VAT- https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005139493-... [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/help/taxes https://www.kickstarter.com/help/taxes