Valve has officially revealed that they will be making significant changes to Dota 2 in the coming future, where they will be scrapping the themed Battle Pass for The International 12 and an emphasis on generating more fresh content this season.
In a recent blog post titled “Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future,” Valve stated that they will be experimenting this season by developing Battle Pass content that is more creative and does not rely on the approaching The International 12 hype. Valve concedes that the lack of content rotation has resulted in minimal sales of in-game products outside of The International event thus far.
“Any single piece of content would be more valuable when bundled as part of the Battle Pass, so we bundled it more and more. This led to a momentous content dropping 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.” wrote Valve in the blog.
Valve also intends to shift its focus in the future to generating game content that provides an engaging experience for its players. One of the things they did was create the prior 7.33 patch, which introduced major changes to Dota 2 when compared to earlier patches.
Although The International 12 will not be featured heavily, Valve has made it clear that they are not completely ignoring it. They’ve announced that they’re planning a big updade in September in honour of the TI 12 competition and to provide players with an option to support their favorite teams, just like in the previous seasons.
“There will be more diverse updates for all Dota players to enjoy. The celebration of TI12 will still continue. A TI-themed update – with cosmetics no longer a focus – will ship in September. This is a significant change from the last few years, so to make it clear that we’re shifting focus towards the event and away from the giant reward line of cosmetics, we’re intentionally not calling this update a Battle Pass.”
And while the blog doesn’t explicitly say this, the implications of the announcement is simple: the team will continue to work on Dota 2. This means that Dota 3, rumoured to have been in the works for some time, is still yet to see light of day.
