Valve just increased the rewards for every TI10 Battle Pass owner

Valve has heard fans’ outcry regarding The International 10 Battle Pass, and it has responded. 

The publisher rolled out a small Dota 2 update that increased the BP rewards for several different aspects of the battle pass. This follows several days of fans griping that Valve was making it more difficult to earn levels and premium rewards without spending significant amounts of cash.

In particular, the latest Dota 2 update increases the rewards from wagering and guild contracts, and made gold more readily available for use in the Sideshop minigame.

The list of changes includes:

• 50% increase in BP rewards for wagers
• Guild contract BP, Sideshop gold rewards doubled
• Sideshop recycling gold increased by 65%

Implementing these changes should give players a significantly greater chance of earning some of the featured rewards from the TI10 Battle Pass. This year’s battle pass features five premium skins, including two Hero Personas and three Arcanas. Players do not start earning these rewards until they reach level 255, meaning it’s difficult to obtain any of them without spending money on extra levels on top of those earned by playing the game.

Fans say TI10 Battle Pass reduced rewards, Valve disagrees

Valve’s move comes after a series of gripes from fans regarding both the number of rewards that can be earned and the availability of points to earn them. Immortal Treasures are significantly more scarce in 2020 than in years past, while the points awarded by completing challenges were reduced.

Theoretically, players were able to make up the difference through other mechanisms such as compounding rewards for wagering and the Sideshop minigame, but this still seemed to be an effort to prevent players from gaining levels without ponying up some extra cash.

In this update, Valve stated this wasn’t the case and that fans are actually earning levels faster than in year’s past.

“We looked into how things compare so far to last year. For battle pass players of all levels, on average players have earned 1.95% more free levels than last year. If we consider only players who after a week were below level 200, on average they have earned 7.91% more free levels than last year,” Valve said on its Steam Community page.

Whether this is genuinely the case is debatable. 

There are a number of different factors that could be contributing to this phenomenon, including a greater familiarity with the ability to use consumables, an initial flood of early levels from the Sideshop mini-game, and global health concerns allowing players to grind more games than they could in years past.

It’s ultimately irrelevant, as players should be in a much better position to gain rewards after this latest update.