Dota 2
Dota 2
Beyond The Summit to shut down after 11 years of esports
William Davis
Beyond The Summit, one of North America’s most notable esports production companies, will shut down. In a heartbreaking announcement for the esports community, BTS cofounder David “LD” Gorman has revealed that the long-running production studio will be shutting down all of its esports operations effective immediately. This is a massive blow to multiple major esports, with Dota 2 being especially affected. Here’s the context for the announcement and why Beyond …
Dota 2
“It hurts my eyes,” Dota 2 fans lament Lima Major production
William Davis
The Lima Major has already encountered several production problems on its first day, and the Dota 2 community is already turning sour. The Lima Major represents several firsts for Dota 2. It is the inaugural major of the 2023 Dota Pro Circuit Season. It’s also the first-ever international event to take place in South America. But sadly, it is not the first Dota 2 major to be free of flaws. …
Dota 2
40,000 cheaters banned from Dota 2 following massive honeypot
William Davis
Getting a notification that a cheater your reported has been banned is one of the best feelings in Dota 2. Imagine that multiplied by 40,000. Valve has initiated a massive ban wave in Dota 2 that has eliminated approximately 40,000 dishonest players from matchmaking. This is one of the biggest sweeps in the game’s history, and the secretive company has even revealed some details about how it pulled this off. …
Dota 2
beastcoast talks 7-0 tour, old meta, and 7.33 before Lima Major
William Davis
In our exclusive interview before the Lima Major, beastcoast Dota 2 opens up on its flawless tour record, desired patch notes, and playing for $500,000 in South America. The second major of the DPC will be the first Dota Pro Circuit international event held in South America, and the chosen city is Lima, Peru. With all five beastcoast players hailing from the region, the team will enter with a major …
Dota 2
The top 3 favorite teams to win Dota 2 Lima major
William Davis
The favorites for the Lima Major dominated their respective regions, and now they’re gunning for the rest of the planet. With the first tour of 2023 completed, the Lima Major will mark the first global Dota 2 event since The International 2022. However, gauging the relative strength of Dota 2 teams across the world is no easy task. With the competitive scene once again split up by region, it can …
Dota 2
Dire win rate soars over Radiant at 2023 Winter DPC
William Davis
The win rate for the dire side has exploded in the Winter Dota Pro Circuit season, with two regions surpassing 60%. The differences between Dire and Radiant may seem small to newer players, but Dota 2 veterans know to take advantage of their half of the field’s perks. Radiant has historically held an advantage over Dire, and that remains true for public matchmaking in patch 7.32. However, the pro scene …
Dota 2
Leaked Dota 2 items will probably amount to nothing
William Davis
New items have leaked for Dota 2, but will they really be added to the game? Dota 2 fans have discovered a new set of strings that grants access to unreleased items in offline game modes. These new items give an interesting glimpse into the development process of Dota 2, and the fact that players can access them has led some to believe that they’ll be added in the long-awaited …
Dota 2
Puppey’s Team Secret falls to Div 2 in Western Europe DPC
William Davis
Team Secret and its legendary captain Clement “Puppey” Ivanov will spend a season in the minor league after bombing the Western Europe DPC. Team Secret has just pulled off one of the biggest nosedives in Dota 2 esports by earning silver at The International and then getting relegated to the lower division. The legendary squad lost every match of the winter DPC tour, ending with an anticlimactic forfeit to go …
Could the Dota 2 Lima Major be canceled due to unrest?
William Davis
Dota 2
Some Dota 2 pros are theorizing that the Lima Major may get canceled, putting a big damper on the 2023 DPC. For now, Valve is set on hosting the first major of the 2023 DPC in the Peruvian capital city of Lima. However, political unrest in the city could result in changes to the $500,000 event. Pro players and journalists have proposed that the event could get canceled, which would …
The easiest way to take Rosh solo as OD in Dota 2
William Davis
Dota 2
Outworld Destroyer isn’t the first hero most Dota 2 players think of when it comes to taking Rosh solo, but OD is now a member of the exclusive club. Whether you plan to go Meteor Hammer or Moon Shard, OD is one of the best mid lane heroes to play in solo ranked. He has a great matchup spread and can quickly snowball to a victory against feeble-minded opponents. His …
Learn how to prep crit and bash in Dota 2 with PRNG
William Davis
Dota 2
Learning how to prep crit and bash is a core skill in Dota 2, so it’s a surprise how few players actually do it. Random number generation is generally considered uncompetitive at best and game-ruining at worst. However, the concept is also baked into the core of Dota 2. Many abilities and spells use RNG to determine their effects, with some heroes practically built around luck, such as Chaos Knight, …
TI11 prize pool was just 6.45% of total battle pass money
William Davis
Dota 2
If Valve used the original percentage for The International 2022, the TI11 prize pool would have been more than $73 million. Now that The International 2022 and Diretide combo battle pass is over, Dota 2 fans can now roughly calculate how much money Valve earned from the release. According to Team Secret’s calculations, Valve pulled in an insane amount of money. But because of the new distribution, the prize pool …
How to fix the Searching for Dota 2 Game Coordinator error
William Davis
Dota 2
Some players think of the game coordinator as the final boss of Dota 2, and an error that prevents searching for matches is worse than any smurf. There’s nothing worse than sitting down for some games of Dota 2 with four friends but suddenly being stopped at the main menu. It’s unfortunately common to see a blue bar at the top of the screen explaining that the game coordinator is …
Chinese team accused of cheating in DPC upper division
William Davis
Dota 2
Cheating is a rare thing in Dota 2 esports, but one team may have exploited a maphack at the highest level of the DPC. In a shock to the Dota 2 pro scene, upper division DPC squad Knights has been accused of using cheats during their seasonal matches. If true, the incident could lead to long-running consequences for competitive Dota 2 teams in all regions. The cheating accusations are aimed at …
Dota 2 players are reporting glitched conduct scores
William Davis
Dota 2
Conduct scores are nearly as important as MMR for Dota 2 matchmaking, which is why players are up in arms about their score suddenly dropping by 80%. Dota 2 players have reported a strange glitch affecting conduct scores over the past week. According to several individual reports, high scores have suddenly dropped massively, affecting matchmaking pools and resulting in longer queue times. It’s not clear exactly what is causing this …
When is the next post-TI patch coming to Dota 2?
William Davis
Dota 2
Dota 2 7.32d is starting to get a little stale, so when can fans expect the next big patch? Dota 2 is an evolving game like no other. The esports’ famously complex systems only get more and more complicated with every patch, but it’s hard to find players who dislike the system. The biggest switch-ups are usually reserved for after The International, but Valve has been radio silent since the …
Week 19 mission guide for the Diretide battle pass
William Davis
Dota 2
Week 19 of Diretide is a bittersweet end to one of the longest battle passes in Dota 2 history, When Diretide first launched, 19 weeks seemed like an eternity. But now that the final batch of weekly quests is here, it all seems so short in retrospect. A new Dota Pro Circuit season will mean more battle pass content throughout the year, but this Diretide will be remembered for its …
Dota 2 dev IceFrog returning for next patch, Skiter claims
William Davis
Dota 2
IceFrog will return to Dota 2 development in 2023, but many fans may not realize that he was ever gone in the first place. In a recent interview, Tundra Esports carry Oliver “skiter” Lepko opened up on rumors that IceFrog temporarily left Dota 2 development in either late 2020 or early 2021. The reveal comes during an interview after The International 2022, where Tundra earned over $8.5 million and a …
Week 18 mission guide for the Diretide battle pass
William Davis
Dota 2
Diretide week 18 will be easy as pie for Shadow Fiend players who love building Heaven’s Halberd. We’re nearing the end of Diretide, and if Valve was having trouble coming up with missions before, it is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel now. This week’s tasks involve several basic missions, including healing from lifesteal, winning as a ranged hero, and accumulating kills and assists. It’s an easy week, but …
Burmese Dota 2 team caught scripting, banned from DPC
William Davis
Dota 2
Scripting is a serious offense in the Dota 2 DPC, with guilty gamers receiving being a ban as punishment. And now one player found that out the hard way. Valve and tournament host EPULZE has officially banned Yangon Galacticos from the Southeast Asian Dota Pro Circuit for scripting. The announcement comes after the team’s carry Kaung “KSH” Sett Hein was found guilty of using digital inputs in competitive matches. Scripting …
Few games have proven to have the resilient popularity enjoyed by Dota 2. The multiplayer online battle arena, or MOBA for short, has been among the biggest and most successful projects released by gaming giant Valve, and it continues to enjoy great popularity to this day.
That popularity has endured despite a great number of changes that have been made to both the game itself and to the communities surrounding it. The competitive title’s history reaches all the way back to another game created and published by another developer, but with Valve now leading the way, Dota 2 seems primed to last well into the future.
From Blizzard to Valve, Dota 2 continues to evolve
While know today as one of Valve’s key game properties, Dota 2 has its origins in a real-time strategy game developed and published by famed video game company Blizzard. One of the franchises that keyed Blizzard’s success and reputational growth in the games industry is WarCraft, which today is best-known for the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft.
But prior to the success of World of Warcraft, the high-fantasy franchise was experienced through a series of RTS games. The third main title in that series, WarCraft 3, provided players not only with a great experience right out of the box, but also with the opportunity to heavily modify the game and its functions, and to play modified versions of the experience as custom games online with other players.
The most popular of these custom game modes was arguably Defense of the Ancients, or DotA for short. This custom game mode saw two teams of players face off against each other with strong individual champion characters, as opposed to building out complex home bases and developing broad armies of diverse units.
It was an entirely different way to play the game, and it proved so popular that would eventually give birth to an entirely new genre of video games: the MOBA genre.
The continuation of the original DotA became Dota 2, a project developed under the guidance of famed developer and publisher Valve. Flush with success from online marketplace Steam and its own franchises including Half-Life and Portal, Valve was more than willing to invest in this new and innovative game type.
The International sets Dota 2 apart
While there have been many other competitive games created and released since, including other popular MOBAs such as Riot Games’ League of Legends, Dota 2 has stood apart for remaining true to its roots and for massive competitive events like The International. First held in 2011 for the purpose of bringing together disparate competitive teams from all around the world with more than $1 million on the line, the esports tournament quickly grew into the biggest such event of each calendar year.
One of the main drivers behind that immense growth was the upwards trajectory of the tournament’s prize pool. Partially funded by Dota 2 players and esports fans, the prize pool for The International began increasing in 2013 and eventually ballooned to a massive total of over $40 million by the time 2021 rolled around. For the groups of players and coaches who climbed this mountain and won its top prize, it was a truly life-changing event.
For varied reasons, Valve eventually soured on running the event itself and on the idea of having so much money filtered into one specific event. Prize winnings were dropped significantly in 2022, and even further for the 2023 and 2024 events. But despite the prizes on hand no longer being quite so astronomical, The International still boasts a prize in the low millions, and it remains the biggest event on the Dota 2 competitive calendar and arguably on the greater esports calendar across all games.
