Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has now reliably pushed past Dota 2’s peak and average player counts, making the shooter the more popular of Valve’s big online games and the top game on Steam. For December 2019, CS:GO posted peak users of 767,000 while Dota 2 reached nearly 628,000.  Though CS:GO started to pull ahead of Dota 2 last year, CS:GO has now claimed the top spot for four months in a row—it’s not a fluke, but a trend, and we can officially pass the symbolic crown. Dota 2’s all-time player peak was 1.2 million in January 2015, with a return to that number in January and February 2016. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s all-time peak player count was 850,000 in March 2016. Both have been enduringly popular games with multiple famous eSports moments. CS:GO in particular has produced many amazing plays over the past decade. 

Dota 2’s player counts for 2019 peaked at over one million in February, but have experienced general decline, with a drop in December after the huge Outlanders update. That’s not too surprising, as Outlanders thoroughly reworked many of Dota 2’s game systems. That drop is comparable to the drop in overall users social media platforms suffer every time they rework the user interface. Dot Esports reports that Dota 2’s average player counts are the lowest they’ve been since 2014, when it was still a relatively new and growing game. Many in the Dota 2 community attribute the slow drop in players to the game’s infamously bad new-player experience.

None of this analysis would be possible without the magic of Steam Charts. All of these numbers, of course, are small in comparison to the world’s most popular PC game: League of Legends’ peak player counts are well into the millions. 

Void Spirit and Snapfire, the new Dota 2 heroes that were revealed in August, are now live in the game as part of the big Outlanders Update that rolled out today. Known less poetically as the 7.23 gameplay update, Outlanders also adds a new neutral building type called Outposts and neutral item drops, increases hero levels to 30, and makes major changes to core gameplay.

The first new hero, Void Spirit, is the fourth and eldest of Dota 2's "spirit brethren," which also includes Storm, Earth, and Ember. "Able to step into and out of the mortal plane at will, he easily outmaneuvers opponents to strike from wherever he desires, calling upon the powers of the aether to shield him in times of need," the update page says.

Here's what he brings to the fight:

• Aether Remnant - Void Spirit dispatches a remnant aspect of himself to stand sentinel over a small area. The remnant peers in a single direction, waiting to pull in and damage enemies that cross its gaze.
• Dissimilate - Void Spirit temporarily fades into the aether, creating a number of portals through which he can reassemble himself and cause damage to enemies in the area where he reappears.
• Resonant Pulse - Void Spirit wraps himself in a protective shield that absorbs physical damage and emits a single damaging pulse around him. The shield gains increased damage absorption for each enemy hero the pulse hits.
• Astral Step - Void Spirit consumes a charge to rip through reality into the astral plane, damaging all enemies along the rift path and inflicting a void mark that slows and detonates for significant damage.

More interesting, I think, is Beatrix Snapfire, a goblin grandmother on a dragon toad named Mortimer who will bake you cookies or blow your face off, as the mood strikes: "The Outlands are littered with the bones of bandits and ne'er-do-wells who thought to take advantage of her small stature and propensity for kindness."

This is what she can do:

• Scatterblast - Snapfire unloads with a wide blast from her trusty scattergun that damages and slows enemies. Particularly effective at point-blank range.
• Firesnap Cookie - Snapfire feeds a potent cookie to Mortimer or an ally, causing them to hop a short distance. The hopping unit stuns and damages enemies in the landing zone.
• Lil' Shredder - Snapfire unleashes a volley of fixed-damage attacks with her lizard-mounted battle cannons, gaining rapid fire and bonus attack range while slowing the attack speed of enemies she hits.
• Mortimer Kisses - Snapfire rears up on Mortimer, guiding his aim as he launches burning globs of firespit that damage on impact and linger on the ground to slow enemies and cause more damage over time.

Outposts, the new neutral buildings, are located where Side Shops used to be, and can be controlled by right-clicking for six seconds, although more players channeling will hasten the process. Capturing an outpost grants an immediate XP bonus, followed by further bonuses at five-minute intervals, and holding them also grants an unobstructed view of the surrounding area. They cannot be captured during the opening ten minutes of a game, however, so plan accordingly.

Unique new items may now drop from neutrals that can be shared with allies but not sold. Five tiers of items will drop over the course of a game, and each drop within a tier will halve the odds of subsequent drops: There's a ten percent chance that a Tier 1 item will drop during the 5-15 minute window, for instance, and if one does, the odds reduce to five percent for the next drop, and so forth. There are 62 unique neutral items in total, and only one of each item type will drop for each team.

Taken altogether, the changes represent a major overhaul of Dota 2, to the point that some fans, and pros too, have taken to calling it Dota 3.

Others had comparable reactions:

Yeah, Virtus.pro got two, I couldn't make up my mind. 

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about the changes. Reactions on Reddit and to the Outlanders Update tweet express concerns about the extent of the changes, the heightened difficulty it presents for new players, and—as always—the general sense that the game isn't what it used to be (and thus isn't as good as it used to be). But the overriding feeling seems to be one of excitement for a major shakeup of such a well-established game.

Here's the full rundown of general gameplay updates. Full details on the Outlanders Update are at dota2.com.

Courier:

• Each player now has their own courier automatically
• Courier now gains levels when your hero gains levels
• Courier movement speed reduced from 380 to 275
• Courier health reduced from 75 to 70
• Courier now provides 85 GPM while it is alive (this replaces the base 91 GPM that previously existed)
• Courier passively gains +10 movement speed, +10 health and +2 GPM increase per level
• Courier gains flying movement at level 5
• Courier gains Speed Burst active ability at level 10 (6-second duration +50% MS, 120 CD)
• Courier gains ability to use wards at level 15
• Courier gains Shield active ability at level 20 (2s duration, 200 CD)
• Courier gains ability to use items in general at level 25
• Courier vision reduced from 350 to 200
• Courier team bounty is now 25 + 5 * Level, xp is 35 + 20 * Level
• Courier respawn time changed from 120/180 ground/flying to 50 + 7 * Level
• Courier Return Items ability will now cause the courier to return home even if it doesn't have items

Economy:

• Observer Wards no longer cost gold
• Heroes now start with 3 Town Portal Scrolls
• Gold earned from killing an Observer Ward will now always be given to the player that bought the true sight
• Heroes that have recently applied damage or a debuff on an enemy hero that dies are now considered part of the area assist gold even if they are no longer alive or in that area
• Assist gold distribution multiplier for Net Worth ranking factor in the area is changed from multiplying based on the heroes in the area, to globally.
• Net Worth Ranking factor for Gold changed from 1.3->0.7 to 1.6->0.4

General:

• Map layout redesigned
• Heroes can now level up to 30. Once you get to level 30, you unlock the entire talent tree. XP requirement for the levels are 3500/4500/5500/6500/7500. Respawn time does not increase past 25. XP bounties max out at level 25 bounty values.
• Spell Immunity no longer grants 100% Magic Resistance (this means that all spells that are able to pierce spell immunity now deal damage as well)
• Removed Side Shops
• Bottle has been removed from the Secret Shop
• All Secret Shop items are now exclusively in the Secret Shop (this means Ring of Health and Void Stone are no longer in the base)
• Tier 2 Towers HP increased from 1900 to 2000
• Tier 2 Tower Armor increased from 15 to 16
• Tier 2 Tower Damage increased from 152 to 175
• Tier 2+ towers night vision increased from 800 to 1100
• Tower Glyph multishot targets increased from 2 to 4
• Glyph duration increased from 6 to 7
• Improved input processing to feel snappier, as well as fixing some rare input drop bugs
• Denied towers now give half of the bounty to the team that denies it and half to the other team (instead of 0 to both teams)
• Siege damage against heroes increased from 85% to 100%
• Fountain damage increased from 230 to 275
• Fountain now has 20% Accuracy

Neutral Units Balance:

• Neutral Cloak Aura no longer stacks
• Neutral Harpy Stormcrafter: Max mana reduced from 400 to 150
• Neutral Harpy Stormcrafter: Mana regeneration increased from 1 to 3
• Neutral Mud Golem: Hurl Boulder damage reduced from 125 to 75
• Neutral Ghost: Frost Attack move slow from 20 to 25%
• Neutral Ghost: Frost Attack attack slow from 20 to 25%
• Neutral Vhoul Assassin: Poison debuff now applies 35% Regen Reduction
• Neutral Centaur Conqueror: War Stomp cooldown reduced from 20 to 12
• Neutral Dark Troll Summoner: Ensnare cooldown reduced from 20 to 15
• Neutral Dark Troll Summoner: Raise Dead cooldown reduced from 25 to 18
• Neutral Ancient Thunderhide: War Drums Aura no longer provides attack damage bonus
• Neutral Ancient Thunderhide: War Drums Aura now provides 40% Accuracy
• Neutral Ancient Thunderhide: War Drums Aura attack speed bonus increased from 15 to 25
• Neutral Ogre Frostmage: Armor bonus reduced from 8 to 6
• Neutral Ogre Frostmage: Slow now works against ranged units as well
• Neutral Ogre Frostmage: Attack slow increased from 20 to 30

It appears that there were some issues with the Dota 2 matchmaking rating changes that were rolled out in September. Valve said in its latest Dota 2 blog post that "some players, especially at the high end, have experienced a significant drop in matchmaking quality as a result of our recent iterations," and so it's made further changes to the system in the most recent game update.

The new update adds a rule for matchmaking for Immortal ranks intended to reduce some common "negative behaviors" and make solo queuing more viable, and also adds new restrictions on what solo and party matchups are allowed. Numerous bugs in the matchmaking system have been fixed, and there will be a greater emphasis on "having supports not be the highest MMR players in a game."

The update also makes some changes to the post-game evaluation screen, and adds a post-game survey that players will sometimes be asked to complete that "allow us to gather more player sentiments on match quality to help find common patterns to what makes matches enjoyable vs what makes them unenjoyable." Some methods of reporting players that weren't rated-limited have been removed "in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio," and Valve is also taking more steps to crack down on toxic players by disabling chat and voice functionality for anyone whose behavior score is below 3000.

The previous update included a wave of bans on players "at the very extreme edge" of toxic and negative behavior, but that only impacted a small percentage of the player base. "We also wanted a more gradual system to address players that are not at the furthest extreme but are still big outliers from the general player population," Valve explained.

"We believe this more gradual user-facing reinforcement mechanism will be valuable for both protecting the larger population from outliers and as a warning system for players who are moving in the wrong direction that might encourage them to improve. We set the threshold score at 3000 due to the low probability that anyone would be that low without having had a consistently negative impact on the experiences of many different teammates."

Valve warned that matchmaking could be "a little unstable" over the day or two following the rollout of this update, but invited players to continue submitting feedback on the changes once things had stabilized. "Our focus going into the next few weeks will be on monitoring and measuring the results of this update and following up as needed based on what we learn. The other big category we are going to be focusing on soon is revamping the new player experience for an update in the future," the blog post says.

"In addition, a lot of the ongoing work we are doing on smurf detection will indirectly help us in the future with placing new players into more ideal matches once they’ve completed their initial new player experience phase. We are hoping that after we get matchmaking into a better spot, it’ll be an ideal time for brand new players to join in as well as for existing players to invite their friends into the game with the help of a better new player ramp."

Valve has cracked down on Dota 2 smurfs—skilled players creating new accounts to play against less-experienced players—by introducing a new way of calculating matchmaking rating, or MMR.

Last month, the studio announced changes to matchmaking, including a new detection system to find accounts that were performing far above their MMR level. Since then, Valve has been verifying the system works, and now it's ready to take action.

"We feel ready to activate the rank adjustment portion of the changes," the developer said in a Reddit post yesterday. "The system searches for players that frequently perform significantly above their current skill bracket, and applies an MMR increase to those players until they've reached a skill bracket where they're no longer over-performing."

The adjustments will be "conservative" at first, but players should see more and more changes as Valve's confidence in the system grows. 

It's all part of the company's strategy to battle smurfing in Dota 2, which it admits has become worse in recent months. In addition to these MMR changes, it is using account phone number verification to ensure each account belongs to a unique user, and players now have to log 100 hours before they can join ranked games. 

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Dota 2 is getting ready for the next ranked season, kicking off tomorrow, which also means getting rid of some of the game's naughtier players. Valve announced that it would be banning people in various waves, which started yesterday. What it didn't mention was the length of the bans, and some players are now discovering their account is in jail for up to 19 years.  

The Steam forum and subreddit are full of people complaining about getting banned for nearly two decades, and even more people revelling in their comeuppance. It's an oddly specific date, but Valve didn't choose it. January 19, 2038 is the latest date that can be set using 32-bit time representation, it turns out, so if you've received a 19-year ban, you're probably banned forever. 

Valve is planning to start issuing weekly bans in the coming weeks, too, which will strike without warning. Banned accounts will also have the associated phone number blacklisted from being able to access ranked matchmaking. Valve also hopes to reduce the amount of smurf accounts, recently fixing a loophole that let them play without a unique phone number. 

Check out the Dota 2 blog for more details on the update. 

OG's decisive 3-1 victory over Team Liquid in the final round of The International 2019 was Twitch's most-watched Dota 2 event ever, according to a site that tracks viewership stats.

GitHyp reports 1.1 million viewers tuned in to the championship finals on Twitch, which took place in Shanghai and began at 10 a.m. local time. But Shanghai is literally on the opposite side of the world from the US' Eastern Time zone, meaning that for most of Twitch's western viewers, the Sunday morning tournament in China started late Saturday night.  In the western hemisphere, the tournament stretched on into the wee hours of Sunday morning and beyond.

That didn't seem to impact the viewership numbers, though. According to Esports Charts (which adds in viewers from other streaming platforms) the overall peak viewership for the tournament passed 1.9 million during the final round between OG and Team Liquid, and that's without factoring in Chinese streaming platforms. 

According to GitHyp's figures, this year's International saw a 51 percent increase over last year's TI8, which was held in Vancouver and saw a 100,000 decrease in viewership over the previous year's finals in Seattle.

That translates to more than a quarter million more viewers tuning in to this year's finals to see OG hoist the Aegis of Champions for the second time in a row.

Valve has revealed the next two heroes coming to Dota 2: Snapfire, a grandma goblin who rides a lizard, flings cookies and fires a giant shotgun, and Void Spirit, the fourth spirit brother.

Both were unveiled at The International 2019, where OG Dota claimed the biggest esports prize ever by winning the competition for the second year in a row. Snapfire and Void Spirit will arrive in Dota 2 at some point in the fall/autumn, and Void Spirit is also coming to autobattler Dota Underlords.

Snapfire is by far the more intriguing: we don't know her exact abilities but in the trailer below you can see her baking cookies and then chucking them to allies, presumably for healing or a buff. She rides a fire-breathing lizard on a saddle with a mounted machine gun, and carries a weighty shotgun to boot. Check her out in the trailer below.

Void Spirit is a gruff spirit brother, and his trailer gives away less about how he might play. He carries a mean-looking double-sided energy sword and uses a teleporter in the video, below.

Both will arrive in Dota 2 as part of the The Outlanders update, which doesn't yet have an exact release date.

In a first of Dota 2 history, OG Dota have become the back-to-back champions of The International—and, once again, bring home the largest prize in competitive video gaming. 

An intense best-of-five finals saw the European team persuasively take the series three-to-one for the championship over Euro rivals Team Liquid. Both teams already set the stage for a historic match of Dota 2, as it was the first grand finals of The International to feature solely TI finalists, and nine out of ten players had already won a TI in the past. They met an enthusiastic crowd in Shanghai, China, where TI had been held for the first time off the North American Continent.  

Upon victory, OG earned a record-breaking $15,603,133 USD, now the largest first-place prize earned in an esports organization. It’s about 45.5% of a whopping $34,292,599 prize pool, a purse crowd-funded by Dota 2 fans and that breaks its own event’s record of the largest in esports. Team Liquid takes home their own pretty coin, too, winning $4,458,038 as the second-place squad. All nine contenders for a repeat Aegis are now the highest-earning players in esports history, with the OG players topping the list. 

Perhaps most importantly to the players of OG, they’ll have their names inscribed on the Aegis of Champions for the second time, a first for any team in Dota 2 history. As Dota itself dates back over 15 years and maintains a reputation as a deep and complex game, The International is likely one of the, if not the, most coveted titles in esports. It’s especially so for Dota 2 players, as the game requires thousands of hours to come close to mastery — and many have been playing for nearly or over a decade, including some of OG’s players.

With both veterans and young legends, OG Dota is a recent team with an intriguing story and penchant for strong, entertaining performances. The organization was created in 2015 as a more formal version of the squad Monkey Business, and the team took plenty of massive tournaments, but never a TI. When their performance faltered in early 2018, three of their players were suddenly poached for a number of other teams, and they were only left with founding members Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka and Johan “N0tail” Sundstein. 

As TI is an open event, OG managed to pull together a squad for last year’s TI8 with a mix of veterans and relative newcomers to qualify. They brought back the young Anathan “ana” Pham, a former OG player, and brought on Sébastien "Ceb" Debs, who had been substituting as a temporary player throughout the season. Meanwhile, mid-laner Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen, at that point only a semi-pro, had won less than $17,000 total over his career.  

At TI8, OG managed to create what the community and professional scenes agree to be a Cinderella story. Fans didn’t know what to expect, but OG blew even the most optimistic expectations by breezing through the upper bracket of the event in incredible fashion and taking the Aegis. Their performance in the year since has been less persuasive, but through the Dota Pro Circuit, they earned enough points to make their return to this year’s championship event. 

A less-than-stellar season was made up for by a dominating performance at this TI. They earned the top seed through the group stages and won their way through the upper bracket to the grand finals. Throughout the event, OG was praised for their innovative drafting and considered an easy favorite pick for such. 

Their grand finalist rivals also have quite a history behind them. Comprised of Dota veterans and backed by a famous and wealthy organization, Team Liquid is comprised of four out of their five players that won under the Liquid banner at The International in 2017. At that event, they dropped their first series in the upper bracket and had to make a similar run through the lower bracket to reach the championship title. In a first for TI, they’d won the best-of-five finals without dropping a game. 

At this year’s event, Liquid were also considered favorites to win, as they’d performed fairly well during this year’s circuit. They didn’t have a stellar group stage performance during the championship event, but they kept fans’ hopes up by running through the lower bracket with only one game dropped in the lower bracket finals, the same day as grand finals. 

Both teams’ skill shone in the grand finals of the event as Team Liquid did their best to keep up with OG’s dominant gameplay. During the grand finals, OG picked 14 unique heroes out of a possible 20 picks, and Liquid picked 16. Team Liquid drafted Meepo in their first game, which was an unusually popular pick (and ban) during the event as it’s considered highly difficult to execute. However, in Liquid’s hands, the hero quickly helped wrap up the game from the brink of defeat. 

From there, OG became a much more difficult obstacle to overcome. Liquid struggled to keep up in the middle two games, but the final game of the event was far more tense and close between the two teams. Most notably, OG saw ana playing Io in a non-traditional role for the character, playing the more passive “support” hero instead as a hard-hitting “carry,” which was one of OG’s most popular and innovative strategies during the event. OG eventually saw an opportunity to take the lead and came out on top to take the series and the championship.

The International is over for the year, and both teams at the event and fans watching at home get a few weeks’ respite before the Dota Pro Circuit boots back up for the year—and teams start their year-long quest for the Aegis of Champions once again. 

Exact details on the 2019-2020 Dota Pro Circuit are yet to come. 

The summer is starting to zip by, which means Valve’s biggest and most beloved tournament of the year, The International, is quickly approaching. Now in its ninth year, the massive Dota 2 tournament has always been, by some measures, the biggest esports event of the year. With the in-person portion spanning nearly 10 consecutive days, the staged portion occupying massive stadiums for 5 days and prize pools blowing past $20 million, its mere existence is a spectacle. It’s an extremely fun affair, and even from home, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  

It’s pretty easy to get lost in the excitement, grueling battles and humongous prize pool, so using my many years of TI-watching expertise, I’ve put together what you need to know about this year's competition. 

When and where is The International? 

This year, The International will take place from August 15-25. The off-stage group phase will take place August 15-18. Then, teams will take the stage for the main event August 20-25. 

While The International has usually taken place on the west coast of North America, this time it crosses the sea into the massive Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai, China. The change wasn’t surprising to fans, as the game has a massive following in China, and Valve appears to be trying to earn favor with China and its businesses. Chinese fans travelled each year for TI and seated themselves behind the Chinese casters to root for their home teams, so regulars are expecting a pretty passionate crowd this year. 

Unfortunately, tickets to the weekend officially sold out pretty fast. When available, the base prices were $73 for weekday bundles (Tuesday/Wednesday, Thursday/Friday) and $305 for the weekend, before fees. 

How do I watch The International? 

If you want a hands-on experience, each game of The International is available to watch in the in-game spectator client. As always, Dota 2 and its spectator client are free. Dota Plus users, who pay for upgraded features, have access to real-time analytics and winner predictions (the latter of which are always hilarious to monitor). 

But Dota 2 always makes many of its nifty spectator features free: graphs, in-game casting, item drops and spectating and player-perspective cameras, with your favorites’ crazy fast mouse movements included. It’s super cool to watch this perspective if you have the opportunity. 

Watching at work or home, or don’t want to miss a thing between games? Valve has their dedicated Twitch channel for TI set up each year—and if there’s a team you’re rooting for in group stages, keep an eye out for dedicated channels for those games. You can earn item drops here, too, if you link your Steam account to Twitch. 

What’s the prize? 

The prize pool is the largest in esports each year, with an annual crowd-funded effort through The International Battle Pass. This year, it has already surpassed last year’s massive $25,532,177 final total with time still to go, and there’s no telling where it’ll end up this year. It's passed $30M at this point, and you can check the current total here.

The winner usually takes about 45%, so last year’s winner, OG, took home over $11.2 million. 

But to pros of all ages and backgrounds, a win at The International is genuinely about more than the money; it’s about placing one’s name in the history of a beloved hobby and community. (But, yeah, obviously becoming an instant millionaire is pretty freaking great, too.) 

How does the Battle Pass make the prize pool this huge? 

Since 2013, The International’s prize pool has been bolstered by the Compendium, which later became the Battle Pass. Twenty-five percent of each purchase related to the Battle Pass goes directly towards the prize pool for TI. While there used to be “stretch goals,” after so many years, the community’s pride has become motivation enough for the record to jump each year. 

Much like Kickstarter or any other crowdfunding platform, The TI Battle Pass gives some serious incentives to anyone who either plays a lot during the season or buys levels. Each level earned or purchased gets you closer to rewards, including loot boxes, exclusive cosmetics and in-game taunts and actions. Plus, when the event arrives, you can put together a daily fantasy team using collectible cards, make predictions and create a playoff bracket. 

The main driving force of the Battle Pass is that, technically, you can earn levels forever to try to earn super rare drops in loot boxes. Obviously, that’s great for Valve and the TI prize pool, since there’s no cap for levels nor the prize pool itself. 

Who’s competing for that massive prize? 

Eighteen teams are qualified for The International: 12 through the Pro Circuit, and six through Regional Qualifiers. 

Throughout the year, teams battled through the Dota Pro Circuit, an open series of events that reward well-performing teams with points towards an invite to The International. Here are the 12 teams that emerged: 

Team Secret - Europe Virtus.pro - Commonwealth of Independent States Vici Gaming - China Evil Geniuses - North America Team Liquid - Europe PSG.LGD - China Fnatic - Southeast Asia Ninjas in Pyjamas - Europe TNC Predator - Southeast Asia OG - Europe Alliance - Europe Keen Gaming - China 

Once all was said and done, six slots were kept open for teams of each region (including South America, which isn’t represented through regular season results) for the Regional Qualifiers. Some teams are invited, while some earn their way in by way of Open Qualifiers. This helps guarantee more diversity, and that each region’s pros feel supported. Still, even in the less represented regions, the competition is pretty hot. The six teams this year that battled for their spot are: 

Royal Never Give Up - China Natus Vincere - Commonwealth of Independent States Chaos Esports Club - Europe Forward Gaming - North America Infamous - South America  Mineski - Southeast Asia 

It’s not unheard of for a team to fight through Qualifiers for a decent final placement. Just last year, champions OG had to enter through Open Qualifiers as the seemingly-losers of multi-team poaching. In 2016, American squad Digital Chaos had a similar approach, but were invited to Regional Qualifiers; they took second at the event overall. 

Are there any favorites to win? 

I’m going to be honest with you: Once The International boot camp hits and the final gameplay patches settle, there’s genuinely no telling who’ll come out on top. In fact, much like March Madness, the Compendium has an in-game bracket contest for the main event/playoffs—and as far as we know, almost like March Madness, nobody has a perfect bracket. The one who got the furthest in 2017 couldn’t predict 2018’s winner. 

Promise, this isn’t a cop-out. After all, last year, European team OG had three of its five players poached, yet the remaining two plus their coach ended up fighting through their Open Qualifiers and taking it all in an intense five-game Grand Finals. And top Pro Circuit teams Virtus Pro and Team Secret somehow never win the event, despite emerging as favorites during regular season the past few years. So who knows! Maybe it’ll finally be VP or Secret’s year? But I’m rooting for the Filipinos on TNC Predator and Fnatic. 

My advice is: Just hop some bandwagons with your one obligatory obsessed Dota 2 fan! That’s what everyone else does, I promise, and there’s really no other way to enjoy The International all the way through. 

What else happens at The International that I should look out for?

The International is Valve’s biggest event of the year, so they tend to pull out all the stops—for better or worse. In 2015, there was the infamous Deadmau5 appearance for the final act. Lindsey Stirling opened the show in 2016 with a violin medley. Artifact was announced during the 2017 event to mixed reception. In 2017 and 2018, there were show matches with the Elon Musk-funded OpenAI bots. And last year, they also asked a Filipino costume maker to dress dogs in costumes. (They were all good puppers.) 

With the event now in China, Valve releasing Dota Underlords (and permitting Auto Chess) and OpenAI showing up better than ever, anything goes.

Valve has officially revealed Dota Underlords, its standalone version of Dota Auto Chess that we first heard rumors about a month ago. In fact, it's playable today for anyone who owns the Dota 2 Battle Pass. 

"For the last few weeks, we’ve been running a Friends and Family Beta, and today we’re expanding it to include all Dota 2 Battle Pass owners," Valve wrote. "With your help, we’ll be stress testing our servers as we prepare for our Open Beta." 

The current build of the game will enable players to take part in eight-way multiplayer matches, practice offline against bots with difficulty settings ranging from easy to hardcore, and play cooperatively against bots or other players. Ranked matchmaking, cross-play, and cross-saving will be added once the game enters open beta. 

"We’re sharing Dota Underlords fairly early in development. And while we intend to constantly be updating the game and adding features throughout the Beta Season, your feedback is critical to help the team know what issues are important to you," Valve wrote. "On the main screen we’ve added a ‘Submit Feedback’ button to the game. Feel free to wear it out. Tell us what you love, and tell us what could be better. We welcome it all." 

If you own the Dota 2 Battle Pass, you'll find a link to Dota Underlords on the Dota 2 dashboard in your Steam library; if you don't own it and want to, hit up dota2.com and get ready to spend a tenner. And if you'd rather wait, you won't have to wait long: Valve said the Dota Underlords open beta will begin in about a week.

Meanwhile, the original modders behind Auto Chess are making a version with help from Epic Games.