Valve has officially announced that Dota 2 will be free-to-play and will feature an in-game store where people can buy gear to extensively customize their heroes. However, the items available here will be purely cosmetic and won’t affect gameplay. In other words, it won’t be “pay-to-win”.
“Dota 2 will not be a pay-to-win game. All the items in the store are cosmetic, and don’t affect gameplay,” read the Dota 2 blog.
“All of the heroes will be available free of charge. We believe restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it’s something we plan to avoid.”
They have also released a FAQ which states the reason why the game is not available yet. Valve are working on expanding their server infrastructure and supporting the amount of people who have shown interest in the game is their main priority.
So why is the game free-to-play?
“We think it fits the way we build and iterate on our games over time,” read the FAQ. “We (Valve and the Dota community) will be building lots of interesting things in the coming years, and learning every step of the way. The more people we have generating ideas and providing feedback, the better Dota will become.”
Earlier, Valve boss Gabe Newell had confirmed that the game will be F2P, and “it will have some twists”.
“The issue that we’re struggling with quite a bit is something I’ve kind of talked about before, which is how do you properly value people’s contributions to a community?,” he mentioned when asked about what kind of “twist ” players can expect from the game.
“We’re trying to figure out ways so that people who are more valuable to everybody else [are] recognized and accommodated.
“We all know people where if they’re playing we want to play, and there are other people where if they’re playing we would be on the other side of the planet.
“It’s just a question of coming up with mechanisms that recognize and reward people who are doing things that are valuable to other groups of people,” he added.
Dota 2 will also be a part of the Steam Workshop where users can upload and rate content. The original creator will get a slice of the sales from the in-game store, and TF2 fans made a lot of money in the 3.5 million dollars range. Their creations are now a permanent part of the game.
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