Earlier this week, Dota 2's summer update was released and included new tools for filtering toxic and unwanted players fromy our matches. Now Valve have taken an extra step of their own by declaring that "smurfing is not welcome in Dota," and permanently banning 90,000 accounts involved in the practice
]]>Dota 2 summer update is out now, and among its many additions are several designed to make "Dota a better place to play, together." It includes a "dislike" button that lets you filter out people you'd rather not play with in future, a new reporting system, real-time review of toxic chat, and more.
]]>Dota 2 is moving away from releasing new content via a pattle pass in favour of more varied and regular updates. Valve explained the change on the Dota 2 blog, saying that the heavy focus on the Compendium - the Battle Pass released alongside Dota 2's yearly esports event, The International - was leaving "the rest of the year feeling barren by comparison."
]]>“Why am I so slow”, complains my partner, minutes into being cajoled into playing Dota 2 for the very first time. “Ah, you’ll need to buy boots,” I say, with the hard earned wisdom of someone who’s spent over 4,000 hours clicking on wizards. “I have boots,” she says, somewhat indignantly. “Those are slippers,” I reply. “What?” she asks, somewhat more indignantly. “They don’t give you move speed,” I respond. I see a flicker of anger in her eyes, as well as maybe, just maybe, a spark of interest.
A new Dota patch came out last week, and it’s a biggun. Is it a good time for lapsed players to jump back in? Yes! Is it a good time for entirely new players to dip their toes in, while experienced players are still befuddled by a map that’s 40% bigger, featuring dual Roshan pits, new minibosses and a host of other changes? Perhaps! It’s certainly a good opportunity to test your relationship.
]]>Dota 2's New Frontiers update has been released and it's a big one. As well as tweaking UI and balance and reworking heroes, it also makes sweeping changes to Dota's single, three-lane battlefield. Specifically: it makes it 40% larger than it was before.
]]>Because I have. Maybe too much. 2816.6 hours of Dota 2, according to Steam, and that doesn’t count the days I’ve spent flying out to watch more talented people play it in arenas. It’s easy to get lost in, is Dota, and not just in the bad ways – even after a series of crap matches, it’s so easy to sink further into its incredible depth, its neverending wizard fight nuances, that it could be hour number 2820 before coming back up for air.
]]>Dota 2 is getting a Cave Johnson announcer pack. Johnson is the deranged founder of Aperture Science from Portal and voiced by the Oscar-winning JK Simmons. Simmons doesn't feature much in the six-minute advert for the pack produced by Valve, but Gabe Newell does. You can watch it below.
]]>"When will esports be part of the Olympics?" is a question often asked by people desperate for approval from cultural authorities or from their parents. But some sporting events are in turn eager to piggyback the youth appeal of esports, which is why the 2022 Commonwealth Games will be accompanied by a pilot esports competition. The organisers today announced the Commonwealth Esports Championships, running in August alongside the main event. And maybe it'll lead to more esports?
]]>The edgy animated adaptation of Valve's silly wizard war MOBA Dota 2 has returned, with the full second season of Dota: Dragon's Blood now live on Netflix. Dragon Knight, Mirana, and their friends return to fight Terrorblade, having committed the classic Dota mistake of letting a late-game carry farm uninterrupted until they're stacked. Should've kept ganking him before he ate all those dragons, nerks.
]]>Dota 2 has a new event mode and battle pass. Aghanim from last year's Aghanim's Labyrinth event has returned, and this time a "multiverse-melding mishap" has split him into several doppelgängers players must rescue. The event mode is free, but it arrives alongside a new battle pass that'll cost money to enter.
More strangely, today's update also introduces experimental gamepad support.
]]>Games are increasingly expensive, but there are still plenty of great experiences to be had without paying a single penny for them, just like the ones you'll find below in our list of the best free PC games you can play right now. From newer releases to old-timey classics, our unordered list is packed with the best free PC games available.
]]>Dota 2 is getting a new hero this autumn. It's Marci, the mute bodyguard from Netflix's Dota anime, Dota: Dragon's Blood. She'll join the game in an update "coming soon."
]]>Dota 2's The International is now underway. The group stages for Valve's wizard flinging esports tournament began today, with 18 teams competing to progress into the knockout stages.
]]>Four days before the start of their huge Dota 2 tournament, Valve have called off having a live audience at The International. This year's event in Romania was meant to be a glorious return after 2020's International was cancelled by the pandemic, but that pandemic is not yet over. With Covid-19 infection rates in Romania rising again, Valve will still hold the tournament but now without the audience. They're automatically refunding event tickets, obvs, but oof that'll be a lot of people out travel costs.
]]>If you have an ancient PC, you may soon be ejected from Valve's wonderful world of warwizards. They have announced plans to strip Dota 2 of "support for some older systems and configurations", including 32-bit operating systems, saying it's so they can "keep the game and the Source 2 engine fresh". DirectX 9 and OpenGL are on the chopping block too (but Vulkan support will stand, obvs).
]]>Valve’s plans to hold Dota 2’s 'The International' tournament in Stockholm were scuppered last month after the Swedish Sports Federation refused to classify e-sports competitors as ‘elite athletes’. The classification was required to get around the visa restrictions in place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Valve have now moved on and announced that the finals of their competition will now be held in Bucharest, Romania.
]]>Dota 2's summer Nemestice event has kicked off alongside a new battle pass. The official microsite of what it includes just goes on and on, but among the list is Davion of Dragon Hold, pictured above, the star of Netflix's Dota 2 anime.
]]>Valve’s plans to hold the finals of their Dota 2 championship The International in Stockholm seem dead after the Swedish Sports Federation voted against esports being accepted as an ‘elite sport’. The classification was vital to secure the same travel exemptions that other sports have during the Covid-19 pandemic. An appeal to the Swedish government was denied, which seems to shut the door on the event’s initial location. Valve have committed to holding the event somewhere “in Europe this year”.
]]>It seems brave to stamp a date on anything happening this year, but Valve have announced that their Dota 2 tournament of tournaments, The International, will be held on August 10th in Stockholm this year. The teams will be going through the group stages between August 5-8th before battling it out for a chunk of the $40,018,195 prize pool. That prize fund was left over from last year's cancelled tournament.
]]>While everyone's still thirsting over Resident Evil Village's Lady Dimitrescu and Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Olympians, Valve have introduced a giant lady of their own as Dota 2's new hero. Dawnbreaker is her name, and clonking enemies with a huge hammer is her game. Personally being too tall to love, I welcome this golden age of Amazons.
]]>The animated series based on Dota 2 is now out on Netflix, expanding elements of the MOBA's backstory into eight gritty episodes. Expecting an influx of curious newbies who'd be horrified by how unfriendly Dota is, Valve last night updated Dota's new player experience to be less completely useless. They've added new playable tutorials and a New Player Mode which gently introduces players to low-stakes games, as well as improving bots. Plus they've made smurfing a bannable offence, to keep sharks out the kiddy pool.
]]>Valve's Dota 2 is spawning an animated adaptation on Netflix this week, and many players see this as an opportunity to welcome fresh meat to the wizard wars. The official tutorial is a bit bum, though, so fans took it on themselves to create a better unofficial one. Enthusiasm! Supported by a crowdfunding campaign raising almost $30,000 (£21k), they've now released their in-game tutorial as a mod. Will you learn the ways of wizards?
]]>Dota: Dragon's Blood - the Netflix-produced Dota 2 anime announced last month - is due for release later this month. In preparation, Netflix have produced a video trying to explain Dota's lore to folks unfamiliar with it. Folks like me!
]]>Yet another video game is becoming a Netflix animated series, this time Valve MOBA Dota 2. Coming on March 25th, Dota: Dragon's Blood will tell the story of possibly the most boring and generic character in a silly game filled with weird and wonderful wizards. Shrug. Come meet the lad in the new trailer below.
]]>Be careful if you decide to turn into a Dota 2 bully because Valve have added a community-based review system to help them govern the game. The “Overwatch” system will send reports and replays of negative behaviour to upstanding community members, who’ll cast a verdict on the player responsible.
]]>Plenty of us have been in online matches for any number of games where we just don't see eye-to-eye with a teammate. If they're particularly thorny, you might report them and hope the system serves them their just desserts. The scales of justice aren't quite so balanced though when the other person has their finger on the ban button, which is what this Dota 2 player found out the hard way.
]]>Dota 2's spooky seasonal event Diretide has been absent for quite a few years, a fact that the trailer for this year does not gloss over. You may have thought that the haunted forest would stay dormant forever but oh no, tricks and treats are back for 2020. This year's event brings back a taffy-collecting game mode and a whole barrel full of rewards. You'll have plenty of time to jump in because it's on now and running for nearly two months.
]]>Death Stranding, the walking simulator about the sad Deliveroo man, is finally out on PC, allowing thousands of keyboard clackers to decode the complex metaphors embedded within such characters as “Mama”, a woman with a baby, and “Heartman”, a man with a pacemaker, played here by an aging and tired Danny Wallace. Look beyond the sub-textual nuance of such masterful creations, however, and you will find a half-decent delivery ‘em up. But is reliable postboy Sam Porter Bridges (a transporter who builds bridges) one of the 7 best couriers in PC games? You can find out by reading closely between the lines of this list.
]]>Like it or not, everything is a roguelike now. Dark Souls? Yep. Monster Train? Definitely. The precariously loaded cheese and pickle sandwich I'm about to eat for lunch? May as well be. Dota 2 is joining their ranks with its summer event, which is free and live right now. Aghanim's Labyrinth is a "four-player, cooperative roguelike" where you team up to defeat various nasties lurking about in an old wizard's shady astral maze. It immediately makes me think of raids, like wot you get in MMOs.
Could be a lark?
]]>The Dota 2 International 10 Battle Pass has landed, and the ground hath buckled beneath its weight. There is a silly number of new cosmetics and features for those who buy it, and a few new features for those who don't. Everyone now gets to play mini-games during those inevitable mid-game pauses when one player vanishes, and everyone can join newfangled player guilds where you jointly earn cosmetic rewards. Only Pass owners can create guilds, but I bet you know at least one sucker.
]]>On this fine Friday afternoon, join me as I descend into the morality swamp. Around five days ago, the organisers of Dota 2 tournament WePlay Pushka sent a copyright strike against "Coldfox", a YouTuber who broadcast the tournament on his personal channel. Coldfox recorded the tournament from in-game, separately to the organiser's stream, and says he obeyed all of Valve's rules. Valve have previously said only they are legally allowed to send DMCA takedown notices against such content. After at least 48 hours of the videos being taken down, WePlay rescinded the copyright notice.
On the one hand, this is a story about an individual YouTuber being jerked around by people who either don't understand how the law works, or knew and went ahead anyway. On the other hand, it's also reopened a whole can of worms about what streamers should be allowed to do with other people's tournaments.
]]>You know how it is. You think you're into videogame soundtracks, then you go and hear someone perform ten of them on a Mongolian string instrument. I recently spent 20 minutes listening to a man do just that, and I think you should too.
Genius Jaavka is the man. The morin khuur is his instrument. Songs from Horizon Zero Dawn (coming to PC this summer), Mortal Kombat, Dota 2 and Fortnite are just some of the ones he treats us to. He's really very good.
]]>Every year, the best Dota 2 wizards from all the lands gather to determine which of them can best defend an ancient rock garden - but probably not this year, you'll be surprised to hear. The tenth iteration of The International has been delayed due to the pandemic: "likely" to 2021, say Valve.
They're still going to start selling The International Battle Pass soon, with 25% of each purchase going to the prize pool. That gives them many more months of funding, which is canny. Expect big number.
]]>Valve have been drip-feeding us details about the return of Artifact, but now they've opened the flood gates. The latest blog post about their card 'em up digs into all sorts of nuances, from revamped mana curves to fiddly initiative rules. They're also muttering about a ranked progression system similar to Dota Underlords', and a singleplayer campaign that will continue the story from the Call To Arms comic.
]]>I'm enjoying how all the headlines around Artifact's upcoming comeback are about what it won't do. It won't sell you cards, and it won't make you play on one lane at a time. 'It won't die in a fire like it did before', promise.
We now know a lot more about how the revamped game will actually work. Random deployment is gone, with creeps spawning in predictable positions while Heroes can be plopped wherever you like. The infinite board is gone, too, as each of the three lanes can now only fit five units. This seems... promising?
]]>Artifact's developers have given up on selling people cards. When the closed beta for Artifact 2.0 kicks off, you'll have to earn every single card through playing - no market, no packs. Stingy pricing was just about the only thing holding the game back for me, so, hurray!
It's part of a big relaunch. Valve have also mentioned some changes they're making to the game itself, including allowing "players to access all three lanes at once". That's pretty wild, too.
]]>Valve are on something of a roll right now. Half-Life: Alyx is looking absolutely stunning ahead of next week's release. While Dota Underlords (and auto-battlers generally) might be on a bit of a downturn, it's hard to say it hasn't done well for itself. Now that they're back in full swing, it might be time for Valve to bring their dustiest skeleton out of the closet. Gabe Newell reckons it might be time for another shot at Artifact.
]]>Unless you're in one of those international versions of Big Brother that are still going on, you've probably noticed that we're in the midst of a pandemic of something called the Covid-19 virus. I can tell it's serious because my dad's American girlfriend isn't allowed to visit him, which means he's bored and phoning me in the middle of the day. Haha, I joke. But he is 70, and has a weak heart, plus he's immunocompromised on account of catching Lyme disease from a tick once (which is exactly the sort of ridiculous thing that only happens to country dads).
If you're anything like us, you're now at home, staring at the walls of your living room because of this social distancing thing. But it's not just you. In fact, all of RPS is now working from home for the foreseeable future, too. So in the spirit of camaraderie, I've pooled some suggestions for video games to play while we're self-quarantining. We've got some multiplayer ones, some board-gamey ones, and, of course, a healthy dollop of free ones.
]]>Dota 2's latest update has given everyone's favourite lizard-riding grandma the ability to swallow her friends and spit them at her enemies. If you thought being tossed by Tiny was annoying, wait until you're in the belly of Snapfire's salamander.
]]>Over the past month, at greater and greater pace, games events and happenings have been disrupted by precautionary measures against the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. E3 is off, GDC is postponed... this year's PC gaming calendar is looking quite different. We've posted about some of these as they cropped up but it's hard to follow in drips and drabs. So! Here's a long list of effects on games events, game development, esports, and more in response to Covid-19 concerns.
]]>"They're like monkey business men", says Team Liquid member Kuroky, "they will GO". Liquid are gathered around for a quick smoke before the Dota 2 International 2019 finale, about to face Team OG. They're visibly nervous, despite Kuroky's repeated insistence that they should "feel free", and treat this like a scrim. Another team member insists that it IS a scrim, and Kuroky immediately reneges on his own words. "In a way", he says. "It's a costly scrim though."
The first five minutes of Valve's True Sight documentary have sucked me right in. It's a feature length film showing drama from inside the player booths, between match pep talks, and the matches themselves. They're all so sweet.
]]>The last ten years have brought us many joys. We've already celebrated the best games of the past decade, but with such scattergun nomination comes neglect. Only three of the fifty games we picked had grappling hooks, so clearly the entire endeavour was pointless and you will need an alternative resource.
Here's my definitive guide to the swinging tenties. I haven't mentioned Worms, because they get everywhere and I don't want to spend my whole day talking about helminths.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>A lizard-riding auntie with a shotgun and an incarnation of aether today arrived in Dota 2 and Dota Underlords in matching Outlanders Updates. Snapfire and Void Spirit are the two new heroes announced at The International in August, and here they are in both games now. They're accompanied by big updates for each, with Dota 2 adding new buildings and dozens of new items and Underlords adding a new quick-paced mode plus the other Spirit heroes. These patch notes sure are a lot to take in. Damn, Dota.
]]>I've always been drawn to competitive videogames. It's not hard to see why. They're the best kind. Competition can be exciting, rich, varied. It gets you interacting with people, pitting your abilities against thinking, improvising, engaged and pivotally human opponents. A competitive context can be both a wonderful generator of interesting decisions, and a platform for genuine connection. I believe in and value these things wholeheartedly, because I've extensive experience with both.
I also believe competition has a dark side. It can be the kindling to incendiary ego, stoking a way of looking at the world that leads to, or is at least bound up with, insecurity and distress. I've experienced this, too.
Let's start with me thrashing my Dad at Need For Speed 2.
]]>After eight years, Valve have finally updated Dota 2's matchmaking system to end those frustrating situations where five randos are thrown together against an organised party of five. You know, where your team starts bickering over buying wards and you end up muting at least one teamie, while they're laughing with their natural rapport and practised teamwork. Awful. No more! Thanks to last night's update, five-stacks should now only ever be matched against other five-stacks. And solo players will now only ever go against teams who have, at most, one party of two. Glory be!
]]>An enterprising thief allegedly burgled Valve's Bellevue office last June, making off with a prop (I assume) minigun and an estimated $40,000 (£32k) worth of games and equipment. The intruder shoved the goods into a wheelie bin and lugged to his car across the street.
There will be no jokes about this grave matter.
]]>Dota 2's stuck around for a good while now. We're only a few years off from a decade of Valve's fantasy murder brawl, with no signs of slowing down. But will Dota 2 be relevant in 10 years? 20? Will I still be doting over my MMR when I'm a haggard old crone, fending off water-raiders with the last good knife while I wait for the underlords at Valve to find me a game? Some unfortunate sods will certainly hope so. A new season comes with another ban wave - and these suspensions are nothing to scoff at.
]]>Dota 2’s mega esports event The International has wrapped up, with OG lifting the aegis for the second year running. The team will take home a cool $15 million (£12.2m), as well as the honour of being the first team to win the event twice, let alone twice in a row.
]]>Another new Dota 2 hero has been announced at The International, hot off the heels of Snapfire, the elderly lizard-riding goblin announced earlier this week. They should have lead with this one. Snapfire is not an easy act to follow. Still, Void Spirit will also be joining the MOBA this autumn, though he seems somewhat reluctant to do so in his introductory video, which you can see below.
]]>The next hero coming to Dota 2 is Snapfire, an elderly goblin who bakes cookies, carries a shotgun, and rides a giant lava-spewing lizard. She seems a lark, as long as you stay on her good side. Valve announced Snapfire today during their huge Dota tournament, The International, to arrive in a future update for the free-to-play MOBA. It's a mystery for now how she plays and what her abilities are, but come watch her introduction video and you might have a few guesses.
]]>Steam is in an odd position in China. It’s like a pirate radio station, sitting offshore and letting the gamers access all that unfiltered content. With no official servers and awkward payment methods, the experience that the huge numbers of users have isn’t optimal. So Valve and local partners Perfect World are setting up a version of Steam for China, named Steam Platform. The first details of which were dropped at an event hosted by Perfect World in China this week.
There’s no launch date, and no look at the client or its features, but things are motoring along.
]]>According to my therapist, we all need approval. So I’m glad that the latest Valve Initiative (TM) is all about that. From now on, content uploaded to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 Steam Workshops will require Valve’s approval before being released to the public. This is to combat the “free skin” ads that plague the workshop.
]]>Turns out, Dota Underlords is a liar. See, this whole time we were all effectively building two teams. One might be fighting the good fight out front, but it's only the defensive game playing out on my telly. Sure, I could beast out a player on my end screen, but it's possible enough unlucky rolls could make the away game play out completely differently.
It's not a huge deal, really. But there's a little disconnect when - even if I'm fighting your team - we're watching two entirely different games. Fortunately, that's no longer the case.
]]>What is an auto and how do I battle it? This is going to be a tough one.
Seriously, why are all the cool kids suddenly talking about level three Dragon Knights? That would be because they are playing Dota Underlords, the best of the auto battlers. At least for beginners.
]]>According to a recent study by civil rights group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 74% of people who play online multiplayer games have experienced some form of harassment, with 65% experiencing “severe” harassment, which may include physical threats or stalking. And that's only the start of their downpour of awful numbers, which cover bigotry, extremist views, which games have the worst occurrence rates, and more.
]]>A work of art. A timeless masterpiece. The pinnacle of level design mastery. Many things have been said about Bombsite A - but does it hold up in a new angle?
Everyone knows Dust2. These days, you can play it across three separate official games, or as a thousand custom maps. You can play Dust2 in Minecraft. You can play the deconstructed remains of mankind's last Dust2 server, Dustnet. In VR.
This latest interpretation comes courtesy of Mark Mocherad's Polystrike, a Dota 2 mod that takes Counter-Strike's hectic gunfights and pulls the camera way, way up. The mod is currently very early in development but already looks rather neat.
]]>I fell pretty deep down the Dota 2 hole. I’d say the game served as another life for a teenager that didn’t really have one, but that would undersell what Dota 2 was for me. I played hours of it, every single evening, for several years in a row. That phase had as much to do with the friends I chatted with than the wizards I clicked on, but at the moment that’s besides the point.
The point is that I’m currently falling for Dota Underlords, but only because I know the game it's based on like the back of my RSI-riddled hand.
]]>If there's one thing that's guaranteed to sweep through the Steam Charts like a giant fart, it's a Steam Sale. Blowing out all the fresh, original or interesting new releases, the mid-year discount warehouse (Junction 45 off the M91) ensures it's a top 10 of games you already bought or decided you don't want to buy.
So who is buying them? Baddies. You lot are the goodies. It's the baddies who do this to us.
]]>Defying all we thought we knew about Valve Time, the studio have just simultaneously titled and launched Dota Underlords. It's Valve's take on ultra-popular Dota 2 mod Auto Chess, which they had been teasing for a while now. While the game will eventually be free-to-play, with an open beta due in approximately a week, they've just opened the floodgates to anyone with a Dota 2 2019 Battle Pass. It supports eight players online and has AI bots to play against too. Below, a video from YouTuber "Kripparrian" giving it a quick peek.
]]>Not only are Valve making a standalone version of mega-hit Dota 2 mod Dota Auto Chess, the mod's creators yesterday announced they're releasing a standalone Auto Chess on PC too. And this came mere hours after Riot Games announced an Auto Chess clone mode for League Of Legends. It's rare to see a mod attempt to bloom into a full genre in real time.
]]>Riot Games have announced a new League Of Legends mode named Teamfight Tactics, which is heavily inspired by Dota 2 mod Auto Chess. Y'know, the turn-based mod about buying and melding AI-controlled heroes, which has grown so popular that Valve are making an official standalone spin-off. Teamfight Tactics looks like that but in LoL and with a few tweaks to make it fresh and friendlier. It'll first launch on June 24th. This seems the point that Auto Chess goes from a mod to a genericised mode, which I suppose is fitting considering MOBAs are a genre grown from autocannibalism.
]]>While Valve work away on their own standalone version of Dota Auto Chess, they're helping the original Dota 2 mod by making it one of the select few selling paid premium features in the game's store. Launched over the weekend, the Auto Chess Pass gives a month of fancy cosmetic bits and bonus rewards for less than a quid. It's mostly just fancybits, with the mod still free for everyone to play in full. This is pretty rare for Valve to do, especially given their caution following the Steam paid mods fiasco.
]]>Dota Auto Chess, the most popular mod in Dota 2 these days (and which has nothing to do with chess), is becoming a standalone game made by Valve themselves. I had not predicted that this would be Valve's next game. Valve say they talked with mod creators Drodo Studio about working together and, while dreams of collaboration fell flat, they did agree to each work on their own versions of it. Presumably some money is changing hands too? So Valve are now making a standalone Dota Auto Chess while Drodo are continuing to work on the mod as well as their own mobile game that basically just replaces the characters. So that's a game based on a mod for a game based on a Warcraft 3 mod based on a StarCraft mod.
]]>Dota 2's International 2019 Battle Pass has plenty of issues. As Matt wrote earlier this month, alongside a waterfall of cosmetics and a special mode, the pass will unlock an in-game assistant that seems to give owners an advantage over those who haven’t forked over at least £7.50/$10. But (as reported by The Verge) the pass is paywalling another key feature – the ability to avoid players.
Obviously, you shouldn’t have to pay to access the ability to not group up with abusive players. Valve calls this an “experimental” feature (by many accounts it’s not working well), suggesting that it could be extended out to all players after this test on Battle Pass owners. More surprising, then, is the fact that Dota 2 has been out for six years without the option to not have to play with someone ruining the fun, whether it be throwing games or yelling slurs. And yet, even though how other people act is a huge part of the experience of many online games, giving players the ability to regulate their interactions often seems to be a secondary concern for developers.
]]>The jungle is a rumblin', thanks to Dota 2's International 2019 Battle Pass. Nowadays Dota 2's Battle Passes aren't just big sticker books where you make predictions about how your favourite athletes will perform in the wizard world championships, they're books you have to buy if you want to play a special mode and access features that give you an advantage. That first inclusion is fair. The second seems... real bad? Ach, we'll get back to those.
]]>I try not to make a habit of internalising internet comments, but I’ll always remember one left on PC Gamer’s Dota 2 review that came in when I worked there.
“Nobody should be reviewing Dota unless they have more than 500 hours played.”
The reviewer in question, the inimitable Chris Thursten, had north of 650 hours of Dota played at the time, and we told the commenter as much via reply. A few minutes later, another response came back.
“He needs 750 hours.”
]]>This week we got a peek through the vastness of space, with the release of the very first image of a black hole ever captured by humans. Not long after, more players were making similar vast, galaxy destroying horrors in Dota 2 thanks to the abilities of mysterious hero Enigma. Correlation doesn’t equal causation and all that, but it’s not hard to imagine people getting nudged towards the character. After all, what’s more human than seeing an incomprehensible celestial object and wanting one of your very own?
]]>Mars! What is he good for? Absolutely loads of wars.
Another hero has joined the ranks of Dota 2. He's a spear-chucking, shield-wielding melee carry who is big into war, because he is literally the god of it. I bet you Legion Commander fancies him.
]]>I'm not big into numberwang. Vast numbers of people playing a game might indicate that it's fun, or it might indicate that it's Ark: Survival Evolved. (I haven't played Ark and it could be amazing, this is irresponsible journalism and I will hand in my badge and gun shortly.) Point being, it's more interesting to write about what has made a game popular than the fact that it is so.
Right. Now I have to convince you this animated graph of the most played Steam games from the past four years is fascinating.
]]>People have been making weird and wonderful custom Dota 2 games for years. With so much good stuff coming from outside the dota-sphere, that's easy to forget - but not when a possible bug convinces the internet you've got more players than Grand Theft Auto V.
That seems have happened with Dota Auto Chess, a custom game where you pit teams of increasingly powerful wizards against seven opponents. Even with that bug in mind, it's still throbbing with players - popularity made me notice it, but quality kept me playing. For half a game, at least, until I got crushed by the people who knew what they were doing.
]]>It's Christmas Frostivus in Dota-land, but Rubick doesn't care. "Swept up in the zeal of unraveling and reshaping arcane energies" - we've all been there - "Grand Magus Rubick marches a mob into Frosthaven, intent on uprooting the original Frostivus tree to explore the mysterious font of power beneath it." Which means, of course, that five heroes have to defend a Christmas tree in co-op wave survival.
I've had a go! It's better than usual. Mostly because of the bonus round where you get to ride penguins.
]]>There’s part of me that wants to champion Artifact as a step forward for digital card games. I want to celebrate how it bottles the essence of Dota 2 into turn-based ‘take that-ing’, to enthuse, misty-eyed, about the new avenues of thought that it has me gallivanting down. I will do all that.
But with some pretty big reservations.
]]>Valve have banned Dota 2 player Carlo "Kuku" Palad from their upcoming 'Major' tournament in China over a racist comment he made mocking Chinese players in a non-tournament game earlier this year. Kuku's team, TNC Predator, initially tried to pass a cover-up story and have further muddied waters with unsupported claims that Major host city Chongqing's government threatened to cancel the tournament if he attended. Now Valve have stepped in and accused the Filipino team of behaving unprofessionally and "making the situation much worse than it needed to be." straight-up banning Kuku from the tournament and docking TNC points on this year's Dota Pro Circuit.
]]>Last month, Dota 2 pro player Carlo “Kuku” Palad caused outrage over racist taunts he made in a non-tournament game. This month, Chongqing's government - the city where Dota 2's next big tournament is due to be held in January - have claimed they might cancel the Major if Palad attends.
]]>Several video games industry associations have reacted to the news that the USA's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are planning to investigate loot boxes over concerns about potential impact on children. America's Entertainment Software Association (ESA), whose duties include running the E3 games show, have repeated their stance that loot boxes "can enhance the experience" and aren't gambling and they're fine okay just leave it. The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), on the other hand, have said it's time for the industry to step up and self-regulate before more governments follow Belgium and restrict loot boxes by law.
]]>I've already played a little, but I'm not yet sure whether Valve and Richard Garfield's 'Dota but cards' game Artifact is going to consume my every waking thought, or if I'll bounce off it like hard cheese. One of those two.
I'm about to find out, because it just launched on Steam.
]]>Several government bodies around the world are continuing to eye loot boxes with suspicion, with yesterday alone bringing news that the USA's Federal Trade Commission is investigating them and an Australian Senate committee has concluded that the government should take a closer look. No, neither of those steps is close to sparking actual industry-wide changes to exploitative loot boxes, but it's potentially laying groundwork for legislation to build upon. Or they'll decide all's fine. The uncertain promise of the future...!
]]>Tomorrow brings the first full and proper new Valve game since 2013: Artifact, a card game based on wizfest Dota 2. Yes, it is a game about pushing lanes and managing lords (made together with Magic: The Gathering mastermind Richard Garfield, no less), but apparently it also has a story told in that modern Valve way, through a companion comic. Artifact's first digital issue is out now for free, and confirms that Dota really is about wizards and lords.
]]>Great Britain's Gambling Commission did not call loot boxes gambling or a gateway to gambling in a new report, the body have stressed after some media coverage of it claimed that they did. Their 'Young People & Gambling 2018' report, based on a survey of young'uns aged 11-16 "to explore gambling behaviour among young people in Great Britain", did repeat the body's stance that betting using in-game items ('skin gambling', the ever-disappointing name is) can be illegal gambling. However, the only mentions of loot boxes was in cautious questions around "gambling-style games".
]]>Now that I'm a few years past the point of playing Dota 2 nightly, I do still find big patches exciting but they also fill me with a sense of "Oh god, how does Dota even work anymore" - and yesterday's update was a big'un. Version 7.20 has reworked the landscape of Valve's MOBA, fiddled with the workings of core Dota tricks from denying (killing your own wee pals so an enemy can't reap their bounty) to pulling (making your wee pals to fight ambient monsters so... okay, a lot of Dota revolves around sacrificing chums), removed and replaced skills on many of the wizards, changed items, added new items... oh god, how does Dota even work anymore?
]]>One detail I'd missed in Friday's announcement of Warcraft III: Reforged is that Blizzard's upcoming remaster should be able to play all the original's player-created maps and modes. Which is great news. WC3 has one of the great forgotten modding scenes, growing so many genres beyond the obvious MOBAs like DotA. Every night for months, my pals and I would play random 'custom games' and always discover something new, surprising, delightful, or just plain weird (the 'sexy' tower defence games were...). So good, great, lovely, hopefully this rebirth of WC3 will introduce more people to its treasures.
]]>Valve are starting to clearly disclose the odds of receiving a rare bonus wizard costume in your Dota 2 loot box of wizard hats, adding an in-game pop-up stating your chances. This is for the "escalating odds", which go up as you open more and more of a certain loot box, and will always track your current chances. The odds were vaguely available before in a roundabout way, as Chinese law requires companies to disclose loot box odds, but seeing it in-game is easier than tromping across the Internet in search of translations of Chinese blog posts.
]]>We love a good multiplayer game here at RPS, because let's be honset, there's just something about doing battle with others over the internet that adds an extra bit of spice to the experience. You get the thrill of competition and friendship as you knock those scores upwards and combine your powers to outdo your enemies. To help you chase that feeling, we've curated this list of the very best multiplayer games on PC for your perusal.
]]>European Dota 2 team OG triumphed in this year’s The International, netting a whopping $11.2 million (£8.7 million) grand prize. They beat out China-based team PSG.LGD to take the win.
TI8 boasted the largest prize pool of any esports event to date, with teams competing for part of a $25.4 million (£20m) total. The second place finishers still walked away with $4 million (£3.1m), which should help to ease the sting a little.
]]>Valve’s MOBA Dota 2 is having a busy couple of weeks. The finals of its esports championship The International are tonight, and as part of the celebration they’ve announced two new heroes, one of whom is playable now.
Grimstroke, named for the fact that uses ink from his runebinding brush to “channel vile forces,” is currently available, while Mars, who appears to be very much based on his Roman god namesake, will be arriving in the coming months. You can see both characters in the announcement video below:
]]>With over $25 million (£19m) now in the prize pool for Dota 2's The International tournament, Valve need a certain level of hype and energy to match that. Enter Gabe Newell, the softly-spoken CEO, knife-collecting uncle, and megacorp mascot. A new voice pack for Dota 2 has Newell deadpan through announcing large numbers of murders, delivering lines including "Megakill", "Monsterkill", "More than two kills but less than four kills", "Ownage", and "Please e-mail me at [email protected] and let me know about your rampage" with characteristic drama. See him bring the energy to the booth in this video skit below.
]]>While Twitch still seems a popular venue to watch Dota 2 mega-tourney The International, Valve have rolled out a few upgrades to Steam Broadcasting. If it tickles your fancy, you can now watch the massive esport event on SteamTV, complete with Steam friends integration and the option to invite your regular Dota posse to watch the match with you in a private chat (text or voice) instance. While focused on Dota 2 for now - introducing some game-specific features to the streaming interface - Valve plan on extending "Watch Party" features to all games after the tourney.
]]>"We estimate the probability of winning to be above 95%", said OpenAI's Dota 2 bots at the start of their second game against extremely skilled humans. I knew they'd been trained up using a sophisticated reinforcement learning technique that had instilled them with millenia worth of experience. I didn't know they'd been versed in trash talk.
It seems they had training time to spare, because they handily won two out of three games at the "OpenAI Five Benchmark" yesterday. This was the robo-team's first outing against non-amateur players, in preparation for the show match they'll play at the International 2018. There, they'll face off against the best players in the world. The bots won their first game here in 14 minutes, so I don't fancy humanity's chances.
]]>Valve have announced plans to launch Artifact, their digital card-battling adaptation of wizard management simulator Dota 2, on November 28th. That's the plan. That's what they say now. Valve's first big game since Dota 2 in 2013, Artifact turns the MOBA into a card game where players build decks to make wizards fight across three 'lanes' of the table and murder the other wizards' base. Unlike Dota 2, Artifact won't be free-to-play, costing $20 to buy in with starter decks - and more for more cards.
]]>Valve have reportedly stripped the uncertainty and razzle-dazzle from opening loot boxes in Dota 2, but only for players in the Netherlands. When Dutchlanders now look at Dota 2's loot boxes, which contain cosmetic items, the wizard 'em up simply tells them which item they would receive if they bought it. No hoping, no dreaming, no fancy animations or pounding drums as it shows you the fabulous prizes you could have won, just: chuck us a couple euro and you'll get this hat for this wizard - wannit? This comes shortly after Valve outright blocked opening Counter-Strike: Gobal Offensive's loot boxes for Dutch and Belgian players, following government crackdowns on loot boxes.
]]>Presumably in order to adhere to new gambling rules pertaining to loot boxes, players in the Netherlands and Belgium are now blocked from opening key-locked boxes in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This is following their announcement last month, where CS:GO and Dota 2 market trading was blocked for Dutch players (as covered here by Eurogamer), with promises that a "less inconvenient" solution would be coming.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Yesterday, I told you about AI researcher Mike Cook and Angelina, his fancy AI that designs video games. Today, I'd like to tell you about Mike's commentary on someone else's work. OpenAI made headlines with their Dota 2 bots last week, which they're pitting against a pro team at the International. Mike's blog post serves as an excellent sanity check, highlighting what OpenAI have and haven't achieved. He also suggests that we might want to "re-examine the entire idea of humans playing against computers", which is an intriguing idea I'll be asking him more about next week.
]]>It's easy enough to make a bot that can trounce a human player in a first-person shooter - just react faster and shoot straighter - but anything strategic presents a fresh set of exceptionally complex problems. To this day, few Starcraft or Dota bots could rival a decently skilled player or group, at least until now. AI research group OpenAI reckon that their Dota 2 bot team (dubbed OpenAI Five) is nearly good enough to give the pros a run for their money, and will be testing that theory this August at The International 2018.
]]>It was a matter of time before battle royale got spun up from a top-down perspective. True, the surprisingly fun surviv.io was the first to get there - but that's essentially a 2D port of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and nearly as shallow as that description implies. Dota 2 is the first game to tackle the genre with a little more depth: I've been playing its Underhollow mode, with strangers.
I do not advise playing Dota 2's Underhollow mode with strangers.
]]>What do you call a Dota 2 last-man standing mode? A battle royale with cheese. No, really - today the gates opened on the MOBA giant's new Battle Pass-exclusive playmode, Underhollow. Eight teams enter a rapidly collapsing dungeon, and victory goes to either the last one left standing, or the first to sneak back out holding a legendary wheel of extra-mature cheese. It's the kind of daft cartoon antics I've come to expect from Heroes of The Storm's special Brawl modes, but don't take that as a complaint - more of this kind of thing, please.
]]>You thought all the European General Data Protection Regulation related news was over, didn't you? Think again. Don't worry, this bit takes the form of fun trivia rather than an endless onslaught of delivery companies begging to throw pizza promotions at you. Among other things, you can now see every report and commendation you got in Dota 2 since 2015, along with the reason given by whoever snitched on you. This'll be old news to anyone who's already part of our fancy supporter program, but I've hardly ever been reported and thus claim my title as the nicest person in the world.
Valve have also given everyone access to their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive stats and reports, as well as all sorts of Steam bits and bobs like your chat history (going back two weeks) and community bans.
]]>Competitive games like League of Legends, Dota 2 and Overwatch are at their best when you play them... competitively. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of fun to be had tooling around in casual play - relaxed environments are great for hanging out with friends, or just being silly. It's how I spend 95% of my time playing those sort of games. That other 5% of the time though? Those comparatively brief periods where I've been playing with a full team of people who I know, all on voice coms, all trying their hardest to secure a win? Those are the times when those sort of games have truly shone as games.
That's why I think League's upcoming tournament mode, Clash, is going to be a big deal. Starting on May 25th, each online tournament will cost a small amount to enter, run every fortnight, and take place over a full three days of the weekend. I'm a Dota man through and through, but Riot's plans are starting to make Valve's automated tournaments look a bit rubbish.
]]>I've had Artifact on the brain these past few weeks, so I've mulled over the phrase "Dota-inspired card game" more times than I count. But what does Dota-inspired really mean? Artifact has lanes and creeps and heroes and also some nifty rectangles if you haven't heard, but that just makes it a MOBA-inspired card game. What makes it a Dota game? I spoke to Artifact programmers Bruno Carlucci and Jeep Barnett to find out.
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