For three weeks in October, Dota 2 belonged to the world again — and for three weeks, our inbox belonged to the Dota 2 community.
The International is unlike any other tournament we work with. There is no single organiser handing out one master order. Instead there are hundreds of small communities — Discord groups, university guilds, fan artists, in-game teams, local viewing parties — each of them wanting something to hold during the final, and wanting it before the next match started.
"Our guild has 120 players and we want individual enamel badges with our Steam names on the back. Can you do numbered pieces?"
"I drew our own hero mascot. I only need 60 pins — is that even possible before the grand final?"
"We run a bar that screens TI. We need 500 PVC keychains with our logo and side art for the watch parties. The colors have to match our team skin."
The message that started it
The first inquiry arrived two days after the group stage opener. It was from a moderator of a 4,000-member fan community, and it was honest about the problem: they wanted a commemorative pin for their anniversary meetup, they had a sketch on a tablet, and they had eleven days.
Normally that conversation ends with "too late for tooling." We ran the numbers on the artwork instead: a single front face, three color fills, no back engraving, one standard size. That was a pin we could sample in five working days and still ship inside their window. So we said yes — and asked one question we would end up asking a hundred more times that month:which deadline actually matters to you?
What the community asked for
By the end of the tournament our queue looked less like a catalogue and more like a fandom census. Four product families came up again and again:
Player and guild badges — enamel pins and bottle-opener badges with a member name, roster number, or Steam handle engraved on the back. Small runs, high emotional value.
Team pins — club-coloured hard enamel with sharp linework, often matched to a specific in-game logo so the pin reads instantly from across a table.
Hero collectibles — die-cast pieces with 3D relief of a hero pose or a spell icon, aimed squarely at the collector shelf rather than the jacket.
Watch-party merch — soft PVC keychains, bottle openers and button badges for bars, university clubs, and LAN cafés that needed volume, durability, and a fast turnover.
All of it shared one constraint: the community is global, and the tournament is a clock. Nobody wanted a beautiful pin that arrived a week after the final.
It was really a color problem
Gamers notice color. That is the whole point of a hero skin, a team kit, or a skill effect: a specific palette is what makes it recognisable in a third of a second. So the hardest part of the whole month was never the metal — it was matching the colors.
A community's "radiant green" is not a Pantone number. It is a screenshot. We ended up asking almost every client for one thing beyond their artwork: a reference image and a Pantone code, or at minimum the exact hex values used in their own design file. Where people only had a screenshot, our art team matched it under a calibrated light booth first, then sent a digital proof before any enamel was mixed.
The other recurring request was glow-in-the-darkfill for night matches, and glitter for the anniversary pieces. Both are small upgrades that change how a pin feels in a dim room, and both have to be decided before the mold is cut — not after.
Those last four days
Something predictable happens when the bracket narrows: every community that was still "thinking about it" suddenly needs pieces now. In the final four days we took more small orders than in the preceding two weeks combined.
We could not stretch a mold schedule, so we split the rush along what was actually achievable. Orders that needed new tooling were quoted honestly with the real lead time and a clear ship date. Orders that could use existing bodies — button badges, PVC keychains, standard-size pins — were fast-tracked, printed, inspected, and packed in parallel.
Every finished piece was still checked one by one before packing: color fill, plating, clutch tension, and the engraving on the back — because a misspelled Steam name is a far worse outcome than a late delivery.
After the Aegis
The trophy has been lifted, the streams have gone quiet, and our benches are clear again. What is left is a pile of tooling we are keeping for next season — molds that communities can reuse for a new roster, a new anniversary, or a new tournament with no new setup fee.
If you represent a guild, a student club, a bar, or a fan-art collective, you do not need a finished design to talk to us. A rough sketch, a screenshot of your palette, and an honest date are enough for us to tell you what is possible.
Write to[email protected]with your quantity and your deadline. We will reply within 24 hours with factory pricing and straight answers about timing — including when the answer is "not this time, but here is how to be ready for the next one."
You can alsodownloadour latest catalog to see every product family, material, and finish before you send anything over.
Next season, the first pin on the table might be yours.
