Valve is rethinking how Dota 2 content should be shipped and announces no Battle Pass for The International 2023.
In a post ahead of the 10-year anniversary since the official release of Dota 2, Valve reflected on the past, the present and the future of the game and brought some unexpected news, moving away from the industry trend of Battle Passes.
While reflecting on the past, Valve stated that “most Dota players never buy a Battle Pass and never get any rewards from it,” while in contrast, every Dota 2 player gets to experiment with the game updates. With that in mind, the game developer has decided to move the focus to content that everyone can enjoy.
“By freeing Dota’s update and content cycle from the timing and structural constraints of the Battle Pass, we can go back to making content in the way we know best: by coming up with fun ideas of all scales and shapes and exploring them with you " - Valve
TI 2023 would have marked the 10th year anniversary of Battle Passes as well. The concept was first introduced in 2013 as a Compendium. Over the years, the community commitment transformed the Compendium into a full-fledged Battle Pass that allowed the Dota 2 flagship tournament to break the esports prize pool records with every edition up until 2021 when it surpassed 40 million dollars.
Last year, Valve took a different approach with the Battle Pass releasing it in two distinct parts, experimenting with how the content for it would be released. With most cosmetics shipped in the second part, after The International, the prize pool sank to less than half of the previous edition, amounting to just $18,930,775.
“Last year, we started to ask ourselves whether Dota was well-served by having this single focal point around which all content delivery was designed,” Valve stated in their announcement and elaborated on their decision on moving forward by changing the strategy.
“Each step we had taken made sense when considered independently: any single piece of content would be more valuable when bundled as part of the Battle Pass, so we bundled more and more. This led to a momentous content drop every year, but it also greatly limited our ability to do things that were exciting and valuable for players but didn’t fit into the Battle Pass reward line" - Valve
In consequence, this year’s The International will be marked in the game by a TI-themed update that Valve says “will contribute directly to the prize pool, with a focus on the event, the players, and the games, but new cosmetic items won't play a notable part.” At the same time, Valve stressed upon the fact that they “intentionally not calling this update a Battle Pass.”
This update will come in September, and until then, Valve promises to release a “wide variety of features and content for the game, delivered in different ways.” “We'll still ship a range of cosmetics over the year, but we're also going to ship more diverse updates for all Dota players to enjoy,” the game developer stated.
One of the earliest promised updates should drop this summer, in celebration of ten years since the public release of Dota 2. However, Valve mentioned that they will “definitely not going to hit the July 9th date listed on Steam.”
