Dota 2 Ditching Battle Pass As No one Ever Buys It
Author: Hawk Live LLC
Last updated:
It might well be celebrating its 10th anniversary later this year on July 9 but that isn’t stopping Valve from doing something that no other game dev has done for their live service games. Valve have announced plans to get rid of the Battle Pass.
The service has stated a number of reasons for the surprising move, the main reason being that no Dota players ever tend to buy it. Valve also reasoned that the battle pass took away time and resources from other content updates.
The announcement was made in the game's official blog post earlier on this week and according to the software company the majority of Dota players never buy the battle pass. And even when they do they never receive any rewards from it other than uncovering new maps, playing with new items, enjoying UI upgrades or accidentally dying to a Tormentor.
The Dota 2 development team wrote,
"Most Dota players never buy a Battle Pass and never get any rewards from. Every Dota player has gotten to explore the new map, play with the new items, and accidentally die to a Tormentor; every Dota player benefits from UI improvements and new client features. Community 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 for Dota as both a game and a community."
Time And Resources
The battle pass system originated from the annual Dota 2 tournament called The International and grew to the point where it became the biggest annual event while during the remainder of the year, there would be no new content updates whatsoever.
The Dota 2 development team also claim that the battle pass had become a yearly content update that took up most of the team's time, ideas, features and resources that would otherwise have been used for the kind of updates that were a lot more frequent in the game's early years.
"When we recognized this, we made a deliberate choice earlier this year to run an experiment: to take some of the resources that would normally produce Battle Pass content and instead put them towards more speculative updates, including features and content that couldn't fit into a Battle Pass," Valve said. "While work is still in progress on future updates, the first of these has shipped: New Frontiers and patch 7.33 couldn't have shipped as they did if we were focusing all our efforts on producing Battle Pass content."
The studio also claimed that Dota 2 will still have content being released that will be related to The International and its prize pool but there will be no new skins or other accessories released for players to aim for. This update is due to be released in September.
Dota 2 is one of the original free to play games of the last ten years to introduce the model of the battle pass system along with Fortnite and Rocket League. It now becomes the first to retire it which comes as a surprise given how common battle passes are, even in games like For Honor which are not free to play.
How the move to ditch the battle pass will affect betting on Dota 2 is unsure but it is unlikely to have a negative impact. Esports betting is showing no signs of slowing down in popularity anytime soon and is particularly esteemed among the crypto community. Even more, the crypto enthusiasts can learn more about the integration of Bitcoin and other altcoins by checking this recommended guide created by true professionals in the field.
