July 9, 2023, marks the 10-year anniversary of Dota 2. On this special day, we celebrate 10 years since the game was publically released.
Dota 2 has been around way before July 9, 2013. Most of the hardcore fans have fallen in love with the game over two decades now. Some of you might have started in the DotA 1 days, some might have discovered the game with the first wave of invites to the Dota 2 beta test from 2011, and some might have discovered the game after TI1 or even later. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we all love and cherish the game.
The 10-year anniversary comes on the finals day of the Bali Major and as our team is on-site at the last major before The International 2023, we’ve been able to ask some of the players and talent what are their thoughts and wishes for the Dota 2 community and for Valve.
Check the video below to see what Sheever, SirActionSlacks, BSJ, Arteezy, Panda, Sheepsticked, Capitalist, and Tsunami have to say to you and to Valve on this special day.
And a couple more!
Omar "OmaR" Moughrabi
"I want to take a moment to just appreciate what a complex game Dota 2 is. It's hard at times, it's easy at times, it's fun, it's everything. It's also a very competitive game.
When I compare Dota to any other games, Dota is just on another level. So, we should really appreciate what we have with Dota 2”
Sean "Snare" Rihlamvu
“I think anniversaries like this are very important because you sit down and you reflect on what are we actually doing. What are we trying to achieve? Initially, at the first couple of TIs, the first couple of big events, it was very clear that for everyone involved, it was a passion project. It just so happened that we found a couple of million dollars lying around, let's see if we can spend it on making Dota cool. Then, we went through this period of time when everything got too inflated, I would say.
Right now, the thing I want out of Dota 2, its community, out of players, the talent and out of Valve is for all of us to think about the fact that we are not building this for us anymore and that there are people that have never heard of Dota. Right now, almost everybody that is involved in Dota, most of us used to play Warcraft III, used to play the original DotA mod, even if you weren't involved professionally back then, that's when you actually started with this game. Now, we are in an era where you want as many people as possible to fall in love with the game. So the thing I want everybody to do is to figure out ways to make sure that others, who have never heard about Dota, can still discover the passion and the joy that we already gained from this game. We shouldn't gate-keep it anymore, we should make sure it's as open to the world as humanly possible.
What I want from Dota is to be around for as long as possible. You know, even if you don't play Counter-Strike or Tekken, or FIFA, you know exactly what they are, you know that there are people playing them. You might not know how to get involved with those games yourself, but you are aware of their existence. And I want Dota to have the same degree of pedigree outside of just our community.”
Chan "WinteR" Litt Binn
“A big thanks to Valve for continuously updating and improving the game. People are always complaining, but at the end of the day, I feel like we should always remember that this game is free to play and we have to appreciate what we have.
We've been here for way more than 10 years and I think even if Dota 2 would be gone tomorrow, it already had given us a lot in our lives and I want to say a big thank you for that!
Dota 2 can return to its glory days, like 5-6 years ago, when we had a lot of players and we had a lot of tournaments, more sponsorship and a lot of opportunities for players to play on a team.”
