Dota 2 pros are not happy about alternative UI removal before TI9

The International is fast approaching, but that hasn’t stoppd Valve from making some in-game changes. 

With only two weeks before TI9, Valve released an update that removed the optional unit query panel. 

“We started fixing a couple bugs with it and felt that the feature needed large design changes to be usable by a bigger portion of players, as less than one percent of players have used it after we added the option for it,” the update stated. 

While Valve developers believe that the panel isn’t used by the majority of their players, some Dota 2 pros feel much differently. 

Alliance’s Samuel “Boxi” Svahn quickly responded to Valve’s statement on Twitter. 

“Please revert the removal of alternative UI,” Boxi said. “Both me and Taiga have used it since our start of playing Dota. Being forced to swap back two weeks before TI is very frustrating. At last keep it until after the tournament. Thanks,” 

Along with his teammate Tommy “Taiga” Le, Boxi mentioned a few other players who will also be affected by the removal of alternative UI. This included streamer Kyle Freedman and The Final Tribe’s Simon “Handsken” Haag. 

All of the aforementioned Dota 2 players responded to and retweeted Boxi’s initial plea. Fans had more varied response to his request. Some felt the panel was “broken” and needed to be removed. Others felt it was wrong to make any changes at all leading up to The International.

Boxi started his esports career with Heroes of Newerth. He played that for a few years, which got him quite used to the unit query panel that was very prominent in that game. The panel is used as an alternate UI option, creating a popup on the right side of the screen so the player’s hero console remains untouched. 

As many fans noted, the panel had a lot of issues. When Dota 2 introduced the backpack and the teleport scroll slot, the unit query panel failed to update correctly. This caused a lot of bugs, including a lack of information that rendered it largely useless. 

The International has far surpassed the $30 million prize pool benchmark at this time around, making it the most lucrative esports competitionsof all time. It’s no surprise that many teams are on edge about even the tiniest of changes to the game. 

The TI9 group stage begins August 15.