Valve – the company behind Half-life, counterattackJuggernaut Steam has unveiled its future plans for the popular free-to-play MOBA. Dota 2. Surprisingly, these plans don’t include players purchasing paid annual passes that require grinding to unlock cosmetics and other new content. Apparently, and perhaps even more surprisingly, Valve says most players haven’t even purchased a Battle Pass.
Dota 2the sequel to Valve’s popular development Warcraft 3 modern defense of the firstHe is 10 years old this year. Since its launch in 2013, the competitive PC game has remained one of the most popular games on Steam and has attracted millions of viewers with its massive online tournaments. Dota 2 It was also one of the first video games to launch a battle pass system, tasking players – after purchasing access – with leveling up and completing challenges to unlock limited-time content such as games. skins. This type of reward system has become widely used in most free online video games, such as Fortnite And rocket league.
But now, after helping breakthrough battle passes, Valve is abandoning them because the company says they sucked up too many resources when they weren’t the real thing. Dota 2 Interact with players.
Why Valve is moving away from Battle Passes Dota 2
Monday, Valve published a new blog About what I learned after a decade of racing Dota 2. Its main conclusion is that the Battle Pass – associated with the year dota tournament known as the International— It was too big and it caused problems. According to Valve, over time the battle pass grew into a massive operation that took up nearly all of the time, thoughts, and resources of employees working on the game. In the early days of dota 2Content updates were more varied and frequent. But over time, the battle pass started to consume any hints or features, resulting in a state that was for most of the year. Dota 2 Contains little to no new content until the next Big Battle Pass update.
Valve recently realized this and decided to change things.
” [We took] “Some of the resources that normally produce Battle Pass content are instead releasing more speculative updates, including features and content that may not fit into the Battle Pass,” Valve wrote in the blog post. “While future updates are still in the works, the first of them has been delivered: ‘New Frontiers’ and patch 7.33 could not have delivered as well as we did if we were focusing all of our efforts on producing Battle Pass content. »
Perhaps the most interesting part of the entire blog is Valve’s admission that according to its data, most players have never purchased a battle pass or earned any rewards from these updates. annuals. On the other hand, Valve says “Eat dota player” to explore the new map of the game, play with all the new items added, and enjoy all the new client and UI improvements that were part of Update 7.33.
“The community’s response to ‘New Frontiers’ has helped us build confidence that working less on cosmetic content for the Battle Pass and more on a variety of exciting updates is the right long-term path. » dota “As a game and a community at the same time,” Valve said.
future of Dota 2 Annual international updates
Valve has made it clear that there will always be content directly connected to it. international awards, just like it did with the Battle Pass, but this update won’t be full of new luxury cosmetics for players to hunt. Due to the magnitude of this major change, which comes after nearly a decade, Valve is “intentionally” not calling the upcoming international-focused update a fight.
It’s a huge turning point for one of the biggest free-to-play games in the world. And if one of the biggest majors isn’t selling that many battle passes, one wonders how many battle passes are sold in other lesser-known F2P games. I also wonder why it took Valve a decade to realize that most gamers prefer frequent updates rather than annual one-time updates that are locked behind a paywall.
“With the liberation dotaRefresh Cycle and Content Despite the Battle Pass’s timing and structural limitations, Valve wrote, “We can get back to creating content as we know best: delivering fun ideas of all scales and shapes and sizes.” exploring them with you.
