Dota 2
More info
- Creator
- Valve
- Released
- Type
- Game (MOBA)
Valve's free-to-play MOBA from 2013, grown out of a Warcraft III mod and famous for The International and its record prize pools.
Dota 2 shipped in 2013 as Valve's commercial version of "Defense of the Ancients", a community mod for Warcraft III. The genre — two teams of five tearing down each other's bases — is called a MOBA, and Dota 2 became, with League of Legends, its heaviest name. The game is free; Valve earns from cosmetics, not from gameplay advantages.
Its signature is The International, an annual tournament whose prize pool is largely funded by players themselves through the "Battle Pass". In 2021 it reached around $40 million, long the largest in esports. The game moved to Source 2, Valve's then-new engine, in 2015 and became its first major title.