4Game

A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!

First of all let us thank you for all the interest that you show towards our beloved game here on Reddit. As we already stated a few times, we carefully follow Reddit discussions and it gives us invaluable information on how we should treat and shape Dota. We take everything into consideration and we put most of the things you say on the table for discussion at our regular meetings (with the Janitor).

News about 7.30

As time goes by, everything becomes deeper and more complex in the gaming world. We face new challenges, players leaving the game because they quit gaming, people leaving Dota for other games, some people never trying Dota because of other, lot more simple and lot more cartoony games. Despite these challenges, we give our best to constantly shape Dota in ways that will attract new and old players, that will encourage player to stick with Dota. At the same time, we have to keep the current players up to the challenge. Keeping the game hard and challenging, easy to access and easy to learn at the same time requires some really special fine tuning. Even the smallest balance changes can cause extreme imbalances and make some heroes/items/mechanics frustrating to deal with.

Every time we touch IO, he usually looks bad at the start then he gets ultimate ban/pick priority. We try to make Puck viable again and suddenly he/she becomes the most picked hero in the last year. Really small changes can have really big unintended results and consequences.

Everything above is the reason we are taking things slow as much as we can. Still, we have a very important Deadline to hit, which is the International held in Romania. We want to give the audience a really good, memorable and fresh experience while we want to give teams enough time to prepare and to adapt. The Janitor is working overtime on the patch, he is also doing QA testing with all the Morphling and Rubick interactions so we don't witness awkward moments on the big stage.

A new patch will be out. Stay a a bit more patient. Bare with the TB/Luna/Winter/Doom patch. Just hold out a little longer.

We want to take our time, not because we are lazy and because we don't have enough people working on Dota, but we want to take our time because we care about you and the eSport title that brought us together for all these years. We want to give you the best experience possible!

THE FUTURE

We understand that there is no eSport without eSport athletes. We understand that Dota is an extremely competitive game. People sacrafice a lot to get to the top or to even try to get to the top. Starting from 2022, we will have an aggregate yearly prize pool for all the Valve organized tournaments which will be then divided in a more supportive manner. The DPC league, the qualifiers, the main events will all have prize pools. We understand that becoming and esport professional requires no less commitment than any other profession or "real" sport. Therefore, we will try to allocate enough funds to every pro player which would be enough to cover basic living costs*.