Patch 7.39b is out now and you can check out the patch notes here.

In addition, over the last few days we've addressed the following issues:

• Fixed a number of miscellaneous client and server crashes
  
• Fixed various crashes related to the new Settings menu
  
• Fixed an issue with moving whole items in quickbuy
  
• Fixed the Quickcast Dropdown not showing if in Direct Cast Bindings and in the quickcast selection
  
• Fixed an issue where units other than the hero, Spirit Bear, or courier could purchase items in quickbuy
  
• Fixed an issue where courier could grab from stash when at the secret shop
  
• Fixed keys being bound to the Alt Modifier triggering other unintentional actions
  
• Fixed setting of Network Quality not applying
  
• Readded missing settings such as enabling the Query Panel, enabling Queued Orders on the HUD, and enabling ability videos within tooltips
  
• Introduced a new setting to disable per unit hotkeys while in custom games
  
• Fixed being unable to bind TP Scroll and Neutral Item with Direct Cast Binds
  
• Fixed an issue where the Transfer Items courier ability would grab from stash if the courier was in shop range
  
• Fixed courier not respecting queued orders after transfer
  
• Fixed crashing the game client when an item from your inventory is dragged into your current item Guide when it's set to edit mode
  
• Fixed Fullscreen Brightness slider being inverted
  
• Fixed the MMR Recalibration button not functioning
  
• Fixed an issue where heroes could sometimes be permanently stuck in a death transition state if death occured while affected by Vhoul Assassin's Envenomed Weapon debuff and other sources of negative health restoration
  
• Fixed the Settings keybinder blocking input if the Settings is closed while in the middle of binding a key.
  
• Fixed courier not grabbing stash when ordered to transfer items when leaving the fountain
  
• Renamed "Structures Require Hold/Stop to Cancel" to "Capturing Structures Require Hold/Stop to Cancel"
  
• "Capturing Structures Require Hold/Stop to Cancel" now only affect capturing Watchers and Outposts. Channel cancel behavior of Twin Gates and Underlord's Fiend's Gate has moved back to "Teleports Require Hold/Stop to Cancel"
  
• Now courier will continue to execute its last order when switching to Auto-Deliver mode
  
• Courier HUD panel now has distinct states for waiting at Secret Shop and for generic moving (vs. going to a shop or delivering to a hero). Fixed a ? showing up when the courier is moving without a hero destination.
  
• Fixed custom games crashing if a team had more than 7 players
  
• Fixed Show Team Items toggle state in the shop not persisting
  
• Fixed being unable to bind the following abilities
  
  • Centaur Warrunner's Work Horse
    
  • Disruptor's Electromagnetic Repulsion
    
  • Dawnbreaker's Solar Guardian
    
  • Timbersaw's Twisted Chakram
    
  • Elder Titan's Move Astral Spirit
    
  • Io's Spirits in and out abilities
    
  • Pangolier's Roll Up
    
  • Tinker's Keen Conveyance
    
  • Keeper of the Light's Solar Bind/Recall
• Fixed Roshan's Roar not playing the fx/animation
  
• Fixed Helm of the Undying applying it's duration bonus multiple times if more attacks landed on an already dead target
  
• Fixed Helm of the Undying counting near lethal damage as a hero kill, resulting in granting too much additional time
  
• Fixed Serrated Shiv's hit particle effect playing when the attack starts rather than lands
  
• Fixed Book of the Dead not playing a sound on cast
  
• Fixed Bloodseeker's Bloodrage bypassing Linken's Sphere when cast on enemies
  
• Fixed Bloodseeker's Bloodrage silence piercing debuff immunity on enemies
  
• Fixed "Select Hero" during Dazzle's Nothl Projection selecting Dazzle instead of the Projection
  
• Fixed Disruptor's Electromagnetic Repulsion with Transferrence not being affected by cooldown reduction when manually cast
  
• Fixed Elder Titan's spirit not automatically returning if using Echo Stomp when Titan has the shard
  
• Fixed Hoodwink and Ogre Magi's ultimate abilities not being levelable via hotkey
  
• Fixed Invoker's Vector Targeted Ice Wall not casting directly perpendicular to Invoker when the vector end point distance was below a certain threshold
  
• Fixed units tethered to IO appearing in Fog of War if they had a cosmetic with ambient particles equipped
  
• Fixed Kez' Flutter Katana dealing less damage than intended
  
• Fixed Kez' Flutter Katana damage being consumed for no effect in some scenarios
  
• Fixed Kez' Raven's Veil going on cooldown if Raptor Dance was interrupted
  
• Fixed Kez' Grappling Claw slow still being removed when the attack landed
  
• Fixed Kez' Grappling Claw not slowing long enough
  
• Fixed Kez' Raven's Veil going on cooldown if Raptor Dance was interrupted
  
• Fixed Kez Flutter being consumed by Talon Toss, Falcon Rush, and Katana Impale's fake attack
  
• Fixed Lone Druid's Spirit Bear not being able to purchase secret shop items from quickbuy
  
• Fixed stash not showing up when Lone Druid's Spirit Bear is selected
  
• Fixed Magnus' Reverse Polarity not playing stun animations on enemies
  
• Fixed Monkey King's Changing of the Guard sub-ability being stealable
  
• Fixed Monkey King Demon Trickster cosmetic issues when casting Changing of the Guard
  
• Fixed Muerta's Quick Draw sometimes causing Gunslinger to proc more often than intended
  
• Fixed Muerta playing incorrect VO when hitting with Deadshot enhanced with Aghanim's Scepter
  
• Fixed Necrophos' Ghost Shroud not increased incoming healing
  
• Oracle's Prognosticate in-world rune timers are now alt-pingable.
  
• Fixed Sand King Aghanim's Scepter Stinger attacks radius being lower than intended
  
• Fixed Shadow Fiend Requiem of Souls not fearing enemies if Shadow Fiend died right after the cast was complete
  
• Fixed Timbersaw's Whirling Death healing more on Strength and Universal heroes than expected
  
• Fixed Void Spirit's Sanctuary not increasing the barrier amount
  
• Ability Draft: Fixed toggling autocast on Quill Spray in Ability Draft won't do the Hairball swap until you have shard.
  
• Ability Draft: Fixed Ogre Magi's Learning Curve Facet to work with all abilities (requires Ogre Magi hero model drafted)
  
• Ability Draft: Fixed many cases of missing or incorrectly added talents
  
• Fixed the Spring 2025 Heroes' Hoard initially having incorrect trading and gifting settings.
  
• Made it less likely that the Dota+ item suggestor would run out of late-game items to suggest
  
• Fixed quick-buying Dota+ suggested items to not buy multiples when clicking quickly

If you ask people their favorite season, nobody picks Spring. Why? Because Spring is terrible. It's too warm to ski, too cold to swim, it rains a lot, and there aren't even any free-candy monster holidays like you get in the Fall.

In fact, the only good thing about Spring is Dota's sometimes-annual Spring Update. So the good news is it's here, it's called Spring Forward 2025, and it's pretty great this year! The bad news: this marks the point of Spring where there's nothing left to look forward to. Hopefully you can just power-Dota your way through to Summer.

For the last ten years, we've had the pleasure of watching a veritable parade of talented Dota fans pour their hearts into crafting short film tributes to the community and the game we all love. A select number of those creations even made grand debuts on the main stage of The International, broadcast to viewers around the world.

This year will be no different! In fact, we're happy to declare the Dota 2 Short Film Contest officially open for a new round of submissions. Filmmakers will have until 3:00pm PDT on August 17th, 2025 to submit their short film creations of 90 seconds or less to the Dota 2 Steam Workshop to be eligible for consideration.

All Dota players are welcome to visit the Workshop to discuss, vote on their favorites, and help us select the best entries. The top ten finalists will be showcased as part of The International live broadcast. After reviewing the Workshop ratings and discussions, Valve will nominate the top entries to be featured in the Dota client for a final voting process by the community to determine the winners.

The top three selections will score prizes of $25,000, $10,000, and $5,000, and each of the other top ten finalists will win $500. (If you happened to miss the winners from last year, or just want to enjoy them again, the top three entries from 2024 were At Any Cost by dmurio, Support by Nightfury Treann, and The Sphere Master by Mikhail Pakhomov.)

Visit the Dota 2 Short Film Contest site for more information and guidelines on the submission process. And be sure to stop by the Workshop page regularly to help review the submissions you would like to see showcased at The International, coming to you live from Hamburg in September.

In the wake of all the changes still rippling through the Wandering Waters update, pro teams around the world have been hard at work, exploring fresh ways to outplay the competition. They've been battling in tournaments around the globe to put those theories to the test, all in pursuit of a single goal: to prove themselves worthy of facing off against the finest competitors in the world at The International.


Amid all that action, some have already risen above the rest — and we’re excited to extend these eight teams direct invitations to Hamburg, Germany, to compete in The International 2025:

• Team Liquid
  [expand type=details]
  Michael “miCKe” Vu
  Michał “Nisha” Jankowski
  Jonáš “SabeRLight” Volek
  Samuel “Boxi” Svahn
  Aydin “Insania” Sarkohi[/expand]
  
  
• PARIVISION
  [expand type=details]
  Alan “Satanic” Galliamov
  Volodymyr “No[o]ne-” Minenko
  Dmitrii “DM” Dorokhin
  Edgar “9Class” Naltakian
  Andrey “Dukalis” Kuropatkin[/expand]
  
  
• BB Team
  [expand type=details]
  Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko
  Danil “gpk~” Skutin
  Matvei “MieRo`” Vasiunin
  Vitalie “Save-” Melnic
  Vladislav “Kataomi`” Semenov[/expand]
  
  
  
• Team Tidebound
  [expand type=details]
  Guo “shiro” Xuanang
  Cheng “NothingToSay” Jin Xiang
  Zhang “Bach” Ruida
  Lin “planet” Hao
  Zhang “y`” Yiping[/expand]
  
  
  
• Gaimin Gladiators
  [expand type=details]
  Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov
  Quinn “Quinn” Callahan
  Marcus “Ace” Christensen
  Erik “tOfu” Engel
  Arman “Malady” Orazbayev[/expand]
  
  
  
• Team Spirit
  [expand type=details]
  Illya “Yatoro” Muliarchuk
  Denis “Larl” Sigitov
  Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov
  Alexsander “rue” Filin
  Iaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov[/expand]
  
  
  
• Team Falcons
  [expand type=details]
  Oliver “skiter” Lepko
  Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak
  Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf
  Andreas “Cr1t-” Nielsen
  Wu “Sneyking” Jingjun[/expand]
  
  
  
• Tundra Esports
  [expand type=details]
  Remco “Crystallis” Arets
  Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov
  Neta “33” Shapira
  Martin “Saksa” Sazdov
  Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon[/expand]

The remainder of the tournament field will be filled by the eight teams able to run the gauntlet of the Regional Qualifiers, with specific slot breakdowns as follows:

• Eastern Europe + South America - June 4th - June 8th
  [expand type=details]
  Eastern Europe (1 slot)
  Aurora Gaming
  Natus Vincere
  NAVI Junior
  One Move
  L1GA TEAM
  Virtus.pro
  (+4 teams from Open Qualifiers)
  
  South America (1 slot)
  HEROIC
  OG.LATAM
  Edge
  Team Den
  (+6 teams from Open Qualifiers)[/expand]
  
  
• China + North America - June 9th - 12th
  [expand type=details]
  
  North America (1 slot)
  Shopify Rebellion
  Wildcard
  (+6 teams from Open Qualifiers)
  
  China (1 slot)
  Xtreme Gaming
  Yakult Brothers
  (+6 teams from Open Qualifiers)[/expand]
  
  
• Southeast Asia + Western Europe - June 13th - June 17th
  [expand type=details]
  
  Western Europe (2 slots)
  Nigma Galaxy
  MOUZ
  OG
  AVULUS
  (+6 teams from Open Qualifiers)
  
  Southeast Asia (2 slots)
  TALON
  BOOM Esports
  Trailer Park Boys
  The MongolZ
  Ivory
  Execration
  (+4 teams from Open Qualifiers)[/expand]

A tidal wave of teams will battle for the final eight spots, meaning there’s a flood of Dota still to come. The Road to The International begins with Open Qualifiers running from May 31st–June 3rd worldwide (June 2nd–5th for China), with Regional Qualifiers to follow as detailed above. Only players in good standing with the Dota competitive community are eligible to participate.

From there, the Road continues when the sixteen invited and qualified teams face off in Hamburg, Germany. A three-day, five-round Swiss bracket followed by an elimination round will kick off on Thursday, September 4th and wrap up on Sunday, September 7th, with the eight remaining teams bound for Barclays Arena and a showdown for the Aegis of Champions set to begin on September 11th, culminating in the Grand Finals on Sunday, September 14th.

All this action gets underway in just over two weeks, so clear your calendars. Fans looking to join the fun live at Barclays Arena can grab tickets here.

Welcome back to Between the Lanes, a blog feature where members of our development team walk through some of the challenges, bugfixes, and occasional happy accidents we encounter while working on a game as unique as Dota.

During an event as massive as Crownfall, we got to try a lot of experiments — overworld maps, branching storylines, hero-themed tokens, minigames, comics, pixel art, and other ideas we’d been eager to explore for years.

What gave us the confidence to take these risks — and something we take constant advantage of at Valve — is the freedom to iterate: to gather real player data, let it challenge our assumptions, and even change our minds. We often say we don’t fully understand what we’re building until we see players interact with it, so we try to get to that point as quickly as possible.

That mindset also shapes when we make decisions — usually as late in development as possible, when we have the best (and sometimes only) data. At every step, we rely on actual player experiences to help us focus on what resonates, and steer away from what doesn't.

In this edition of Between the Lanes, we'll walk through the development of something that came online relatively late in Crownfall — the Act IV boss battle between our heroes and Queen Imperia, Nest of Thorns. We're also using it as a case study to show how playtesting, and the data it generates, shape our decision-making.



The first (and only) minigame in Act I was a modest fishing minigame that had Tidehunter testing your angling skills in the hopes of catching him breakfast. A lot of Act I was like this — small ideas we'd scattered throughout the map to see what players would engage with. The encouraging player data from Act I gave us the confidence to get more adventurous in Act II, and by Act III we were shipping Sleet Fighter, a fighting game brawler at Tusk's favorite dive bar; Dragon Chess, a match-three battle of wits against Winter Wyvern; and Zaug's Lair, a shoot 'em up pitting an evil dragon against Vengeful Spirit through Icewrack's twisting cave system.

By the time we reached Act IV, we had a solid sense of what worked and what didn’t. What kind of data? Everything from the concrete — how many players replayed each minigame, and how often — to the more interpretive, like user-submitted feedback and discussions online. That clarity gave us the confidence to go all-in on a blow-the-doors-off finale: an epic boss battle against the evil Queen Imperia.

Of course, deciding what kind of game the boss battle should be wasn't easy. We knew it needed to deliver the high-stakes spectacle players were expecting. But it also had to offer enough variety and replayability to stay fresh after multiple runs. And because this was a mini-game, designed to be played while queuing for a match, it needed to be intense but brief. It should feel like a tasty snack, not a long meal.

To strike the right balance, we needed a genre that combined the high production values of Sleet Fighter with the replayability of Dragon Chess. After all, this would be the epic showdown between Vengeful Spirit, Skywrath Mage, and newcomer Kez (our "big three" from Crownfall's four-act story) storming Imperia's castle. We wanted the player to feel like they were up against impossible odds in their quest to reach the queen.



One idea that briefly gained some traction was a turn-based JRPG-style battle. But it didn't take long to realize it wasn't the right fit. We needed something that would throw players into the action quickly — something short, intense, and fun enough to play between Dota queues.

That's where the survivors genre came in. A "reverse bullet hell" with endless waves of enemies, it was the perfect vessel for an epic-feeling, high-stakes boss battle. The player would hack their way through hordes of enemies, while using a little strategy to power up various abilities in preparation for a final showdown with Imperia. It would also be easy to map existing Dota items and abilities to the action, so players would already have a sense of how things worked.

Since we wanted the experience to be relatively brief, replayability was another big piece of the puzzle. The survivors genre gave us a lot of variability, since it's never the same experience twice. Players aren't guaranteed to get the items or events they're expecting in the exact order they want. The variability encourages you to keep trying, starting from scratch in a way that feels challenging without feeling insurmountable or frustrating. We didn't necessarily want you to win the first time... but we also wanted you to keep playing when you lost.



The earliest prototypes of Nest of Thorns started with the same core elements as the version we eventually shipped. A player picked one of three heroes, faced wave after wave of enemies, and eventually got to Imperia. What these early attempts didn't have was anything remotely fun. Sometimes a hero wandered a mostly empty map, bumping into the occasional skeleton. Other times the waves of enemies were so overwhelming it wasn't actually possible to win (or so we thought; more on that later). We knew there was a fun game in here somewhere. We just had to keep torturing our playtesters with bad builds until we found it.

Every Valve employee is a guinea pig, and putting someone in front of a build is how we figure out if something's working (or, just as often, not working). We can brainstorm forever, but until someone sits down and plays, we don't really know if the choices we've made are landing.

At first, playtesters struggled to survive the first 3-6 minutes. Usually, that's a sign that the game is either unbalanced or not explaining its rules well enough. We'd sit down with them and have them walk us through their experience — moments where they weren't sure what to do next, or where it got so overwhelming it felt impossible, or even where they just felt bored. Then we'd go back to our desks and make some changes, and put it in front of a new playtester. Slowly, we started to see progress.

And then something happened.

After walking us through their first run, a playtester who'd just lost asked, "Actually, can I try again?"

That was new, and encouraging. Nest of Thorns was still nowhere in the neighborhood of good yet — it usually took at least three runs before someone figured out how to beat our prototype — but it was at least nice that, for once, we weren't making coworkers play our crappy prototype — they were actually asking to play our crappy prototype a second time. It was a teeny tiny flicker of interest: "I don't absolutely hate this." We were happy to take it.

But the real eureka moment was still to come.



One key aspect of the survivors genre our early versions didn't have was constant pressure. Initially, we'd just spawn a wave of a hundred skeletons into the level and let the hero hack away at them. Once the hero'd hacked them down to zero, we'd spawn in the next wave of baddies at a harder difficulty. Playtesters got bored of this quickly. Once they figured out the only goal was endlessly hacking at bad guys, it started to feel like a chore. The only reward for killing them more efficiently was that you got to fight the next, harder wave sooner. (Yay?)

Eventually we figured out that when we spawned a hundred skeletons in and the hero started hacking away, we needed to put that wave on a timer and keep topping the skeletons back up no matter how many the hero killed. Once the timer went to zero, we'd spawn in a harder wave of enemies on a new timer. Now the pressure never let up, and the player stayed engaged.

But more importantly, their goals changed. When our hero was just slaughtering a dwindling number of skeletons, the goal was "Make number of skeletons go to zero." But if the number of skeletons never goes down no matter how many you kill, then it doesn't take long for players to realize killing them isn't actually the goal.

Instead, they turned their focus to what they were getting from killing all those skeletons — in this case, abilities and upgrades. Suddenly the goal wasn't "Kill all skeletons," it was "How many of these things can I kill as fast as possible to get as powerful as possible?" Instead of feeling like a chore, harvesting waves of enemies started to feel like chasing a jackpot — with every kill bringing you closer to the perfect build.

Because progressing to the next wave was no longer tied to killing everything from the last one, we'd also gained something new: a shared clock. This meant players were now sharing the same rhythm — a common language for when things started to get hard. So when one player said "I can't stand that wave of spiders at minute four," everyone else instantly knew what they meant (those spiders are the worst).

We'd finally found the fun. This small shift in focus helped clarify what players were enjoying and why, and kicked off a cascade of new ideas — more powerful upgrades, crazier abilities, and build possibilities we hadn't even considered. This meant playtesters could make radically different hero builds from each other in a single playthrough. And that meant they were more engaged during playtests, giving us better feedback and suggestions to feed into the next build.

Well, if we asked more than once. After a playtest, we'd sometimes find that coworkers no longer wanted to talk to us about their highs and lows. They wanted to talk to each other about their builds, and argue about which one was better.

As build variety kept growing, we started wondering if we'd missed a big piece of the puzzle — what if the heroes themselves felt just as unique as the abilities? In early prototypes, other than their starting ability, the player experience was largely identical no matter which hero you picked. Now we were tweaking them into truly unique choices, making one stronger, another faster, another better at magic damage — which opened up the variability of the builds even more. Picking one hero over another also meant opening up specific branches of abilities you might not otherwise get to build towards. (And because there's always a bit of luck involved in which upgrades you get, every choice felt like a high-stakes gamble.)




Meanwhile, while you're distracted figuring out which upgrade branch is going to get you to Imperia, we're slowly ratcheting up the difficulty. At some point, without you even noticing, the waves of enemies have gotten deadly, the pace is relentless, and you can barely keep your head above water.

At least, that was the goal. With the upgrades coming along, we moved onto the pace of the gameplay. We wanted the experience to be intense, but not overstay its welcome. (We knew most players would be playing while they were queued for a match.) On the flip side, though, we wanted to leave enough breathing room for players to enjoy watching their upgrade choices stack.

Our back-of-the-napkin math gave us about twelve minutes of total gameplay — not counting the three-minute Imperia fight at the end. So we got to work on pacing the first six minutes. How often do we give the player an upgrade choice? How early can they start stacking abilities? How much damage should each ability do where it feels satisfying but not overpowered?

Because we were tuning the gameplay in sections, focusing on the first six minutes meant the final six minutes were essentially unplayable at this point. We'd playtest people on the first six minutes and then make them stop. Technically they could keep playing, but everything after minute six was placeholder. You weren't meant to play past that. (We actually begged our coworkers not to.)

One funny side effect of making the abilities and upgrades as fun as they were turning into was that playtesters often didn't care that half the game was still unplayable. We'd sit at a coworker's desk, watching them play through the first half of the game. Once they hit the six-minute mark:

"Great, thank you," we'd say. "Can you start the game over?"

A pause.

"Actually, hold on, I think I can beat it."

We'd remind them the last six minutes was a punishing unbalanced wasteland of copy-pasted enemies and was currently unbeatable. They would say they understood. We would interview them for their highs and lows. They'd give us lots of great feedback on their playthrough of the first six minutes. And then we would go back to our desks, and they would watch us go, and then unpause the game and try to beat it anyway.

Some of our coworkers took it as a personal affront that they couldn't get through the last ferociously unfair, literally impossible-to-beat six minutes. So while we were designing the first half of the game, they were pooling their resources slamming their heads against the unbeatable second half.

And here's the thing: They beat it.

Eventually they figured out the precise combination of overpowered abilities that we hadn't fine-tuned yet, and beat the part of the game that wasn't meant to be beaten. (Which tells you a lot about game design — but maybe even more about the kind of people who get into game design.)



By the end of development, the core game was built. Abilities, mini-boss encounters, and the final showdown with Queen Imperia were all in place. At this point, we were no longer looking for game-breaking issues, but ways to adjust, balance and polish to a shine what we already knew was working. We kept playtesting, but had dialed back the exhaustive post-mortem interviews and were just letting people play for fun (and, of course, to generate more data).

While the quantitative data that came from every run was important, the qualitative data coming from playtest games was no less important. In one memorable example, one playtest ended epically with the Wailing Mass — internally named 'Meatball' — taking over half the screen and devouring the player. At this point the playtester had an audience of coworkers watching behind him, all laughing at his misfortune. Of course, he immediately pressed the "play again" button.

We were confident we had something worth shipping, and had opened up playtesting from people who had volunteered to playtest, to basically anyone we could corner at the company and rope into a game. In our earliest prototypes, we'd get treated to an 11PM Slack message saying "The game is too difficult." By this stage, we'd still get those 11PM slacks, but then the 3AM follow-up of "Never mind, I beat it."

Even with a mostly finished game, we were still working on Nest of Thorns right up until we shipped Act IV of Crownfall. Way back at the beginning of this post, we said that we can make better decisions when we have good data to support them. Well, now we had some: With internal playtesters as excited as they were to play (and replay) the game, we had a ton of data to know which parts of what we'd built were resonating. And nothing gets a room full of game devs excited like the moment when a game starts being fun. We wanted to do more of the things we now knew were working, as much as we could possibly fit in. New items, abilities, lore and even waves — every time we thought we'd nailed the game down, someone would inevitably come up with one more 'just one more' idea. And because it was usually a pretty great idea, we couldn't resist trying it.

It wasn't just that feature ideas kept coming in: they kept getting better the closer we got to release. In the early days, when things were more amorphous, it was hard to distinguish between a potentially high-value feature and an actually low-value feature. By the time we were a week out, the best places to put our resources and time to make the game better were obvious.



As we put the finishing touches on Nest of Thorns, we were able to step back and look at it with fresh eyes. The challenge had been to use things we'd learned from prior acts to build a suitably epic boss battle to close out a massive event. We were pretty happy with what we'd pulled off, especially given the time constraints. We'd found the fun.

Unfortunately, the community hadn't found it yet. What we hadn't considered was that, since Nest of Thorns was a boss battle, logically it had to live at... well, where the boss lives, at the end of the game. This meant at least a day or two of quiet torture as we waited for Dota's power players to grind their way through Act IV at inhuman speeds, waiting to see when players would finally get a chance to play it.

It turns out we didn't have long to wait. We thought we'd have at least a day or two before anyone reached Queen Imperia's throne room. Turns out we'd severely underestimated how fast Dota players can haul ass through content. Just sixteen hours after launch — yes, hours — the first power players had already fought their way through the entire last act and were getting their first taste of Nest of Thorns.

And eventually everyone else caught up too. As of this writing, Nest of Thorns has been played nearly a hundred million times. (If you haven't caught up with it yourself, or just want to try your hand at it one more time, it's still playable in the Crownfall Archive in-client.)



We hope this behind-the-scenes look at the Dota team getting a minigame up on its feet gave you a better idea of our process — and didn't just make you stare at this blog post in horror with the revelation that we're making it all up as we go along. But really, we hope it proves that game design isn't some mystical art by game-making geniuses steepling their fingers in dark rooms, but an iterative process of trial and error driven by data and anxiety and playtesting and failure and playtesting and more failure and more playtesting.

Game development thrives on iteration — what starts as "no idea" slowly turns into "some idea" by looking at past ideas that worked. Then it turns into a bad prototype that nobody wants to play but we make them anyway. Then we watch them not having fun playing it, and go off and fix all the not having fun parts, until eventually we're watching people have fun playing it. Then we polish it and polish it and look at the ship calendar and weep. Valve's ethos has always been to embrace uncertainty and allow data to shape development. It means we don't always ship things on time. But we think you're going to like them when they're ready.

The arenas might be different, the star players might change, and every year new teams will rise while others fall. But while many things change, one thing is constant: The International remains a chronicle of the same journey, following the best Dota team in the world as they conquer every obstacle, overcome every challenge, and carve their names into the Aegis.

The original TI was a five-day event, hosted on the show floor of GamesCom in Cologne. Valve has been hosting The International for more than a decade since, and every year we've learned new things — everything from booth design to sponsorships to specific details of tournament design. Every year we try to capture the best parts of prior decisions while looking for opportunities to try some variations that might work even better.

So, with tickets going on sale soon (details below), we wanted to walk you through this year's tournament format.




We set out this year to create a structure such that every single match had stakes, and that those stakes were clear to the teams and the viewers. We wanted to do this without losing the massive amount of foundational, tournament-meta-defining games that fans of the group stage enjoy every year. And at the same time, the new format needed to avoid issues we've seen in previous years, where individual round robin games didn't matter at all, or only mattered to teams that weren't in the match.

This year, The Road to The International starts with a five-round Swiss bracket: Over the first three days, sixteen teams will play best-of-three matches against other teams with the same series record (a 2:0 team will face another 2:0 team, a 1:3 team will face another 1:3 team, etc.). A fourth series win will cause that team to automatically advance to The International; a fourth loss will cause that team to be eliminated.

After five rounds of Swiss, the three teams with four wins will have secured their spot in The International and the three teams with four losses will have been eliminated. The ten remaining teams will face-off in a special elimination round (strongest against weakest) with the five winners advancing to the International and the five losers being eliminated.

Swiss formats come with unique challenges, and we've taken special care to make sure fans can know in advance when their favorite teams are playing, and that no team with a winning record ever has to play two series in a row (including a last-game-of-the-night followed by a first-game-of-the-morning).

The Road to The International runs from Thursday, September 4th through Sunday, September 7th, including both the Swiss rounds and the following elimination rounds. In total, the Road to The International will eliminate eight of the sixteen invited teams and the other eight will advance to the arena for The International.




The International starts Thursday, September 11th and runs in the arena for four days, culminating in the Grand Finals on Sunday, September 14th. The eight teams that advanced from The Road to The International will compete for the Aegis in Barclays Arena in front of thousands of fans.

All eight teams start in the upper bracket of a standard double-elimination bracket, seeded based on Road to the International performance (highest against lowest). All matches are best-of-three except for the Grand Finals, which are best-of-five.


Single-day and multi-day bundle tickets for The International will go on sale on AXS starting 10am CEST, Tuesday, April 15th. We can't wait to see you there.

Patch 7.38c is out now and you can check out the patch notes here.

In addition, over the last few days we've addressed the following issues:

• Added missing patch note line from 7.38 patch notes "Roshan no longer drops Aghanim's Blessing"
  
  
• Fixed Tormentor spawning on top of the Player's Hero at 15 minutes when demoing a terrain
  
• Fixed -createhero sometimes creating a hero with no facet
  
• Fixed the Combat Log displaying non-visible enemy's channelling of Twin Gates
  
  
• Fixed it being possible for a hero to get their position or hero model angle stuck if Roshan's grab animation is interrupted
  
• Fixed Haste rune duration not correctly upgrading with the rune cycle
  
  
• Fixed being able to generate infinite teleport scrolls by buying then selling boots of travel
  
• Fixed various scenarios where players could learn if their enemy activated a smoke of deceit while in fog of war
  
  
• Fixed Alchemist Scepter granting buff visually always displaying as having given 1 scepter to enemies
  
• Fixed Bristleback's Quill Spray damage from Aghanim's Scepter counting as reflected damage
  
• Fixed being able to get negative networth on Dazzle by stashing a teleport scroll, buying a teleport scroll on your courier, having no teleport scroll on your hero, buying and selling boots of travel multiple times, giving the teleport scroll on your courier to dazzle, casting Nothl Projection, then using your courier to deliver your stashed teleport scrolls to Dazzle while the ultimate is active
  
• Fixed Clinkz's Tar Bomb not procing Magic Wand when set to autocast
  
• Fixed Doom's Devil's Bargain buyback being calculated incorrectly
  
• Fixed Hoodwink's Level 20 Talent Sharpshooter Provides Truesight have a blindspot along the path
  
• Fixed Kez's Echo Slash first hit being unable to trigger Shadowhawk's bonus when used from invisibility
  
• Fixed Kunkka's Level 25 Spell AoE talent not applying correctly to Tidebringer
  
• Fixed Lycan's Howl and Feral Impulse not applying correctly to Aghanim's Shard Wolves
  
• Fixed Magnus' Skewer not destroying trees if Magnus doesn't have an Aghanim's Shard
  
• Fixed Marci's Rebound being cancelled incorrectly when affected by Slark's Pounce and debuff immune
  
• Fixed Marci's Rebound vector targeting being inaccurate if the target location is too close to the Rebound target
  
• Fixed Medusa's Venomous Volley working on illusions with Split Shot active
  
• Fixed Gleipnir active triggering Nyx Assassin's Spiked Carapace stun
  
• Fixed Muerta's Level 15 Calling Regeneration Talent not lasting for the full duration when used in conjunction with the Dance of the Dead Facet
  
• Fixed Naga Siren's Deluge setting the maximum and minimum speed of an enemy to 240
  
• Fixed Pangolier's Fortune Favors the Bold debuff being visible on enemies when the enemy doesn't have vision of Pangolier
  
• Fixed Puck's Phase Shift stopping the invulnerability but not the channeling when using certain items
  
• Fixed Puck's Puckish incorrectly considering all projectiles disjointed using invisibility as spell projectiles, restoring more mana and health than intended
  
• Fixed Razor's Static Link incorrectly showing an alt-cast state when gaining shard
  
• Fixed Riki's Tricks of the Trade stopping the attacks and invulnerability but not the channeling when using certain items
  
• Fixed Slardar unintentionally getting additional assists from puddles he created
  
• Fixed Templar Assassin's Meld not applying to both attacks if Meld was used twice in quick succession
  
• Fixed Windranger's Focus Fire stopping if she loses and regains sight of her target while under the effect of her Windrun with Aghanim's Scepter
  
• Fixed Winter Wyvern's Winter Blast creating splinter projectiles for invisible units around the target hit by the initial projectile
  
• Fixed Winter Wyvern's Winter Blast splinter projectiles not correctly disjointing from invisible units if the target hit by the initial projectile has vision over the invisible unit
  
• Fixed Witch Doctor's Death Ward Scepter not correctly applying the 50% bonus accuracy to the bounced projectile
  
• Fixed Vengeful Spirit's Scepter illusion instantly being killed by Tormentor when casting Wave of Terror from afar
  
• Fixed Zeus's Heavenly Jump's tooltip not correctly reflecting AoE increases to the vision radius Zeus gains after jumping
  
  
  
• Ability Draft: Fixed Pangolier getting Roll Up shard upgrade without drafting Rolling Thunder
  
• Ability Draft: Fixed Kez getting Shodo Sai abilities without drafting them

Immortal Draft Changes:

• Immortal Draft rules will now be used if any player is above 8500 MMR (roughly the top 0.5% of players). (Previously, the cutoff was 6500 MMR, roughly the top 1.5% of players.)
  
• Immortal Draft games do not show up in public match history. Replay access is restricted to game participants, and these games are not listed in Web APIs.
  
• Players who are above 8500 MMR (the top 0.5% of players) are now required to register an official name to queue for ranked. This name cannot be changed and will be displayed during the pre-game player draft phase of Immortal Draft games. Approximately half of players at this rank already have an official name registered.
  
• Players above 8500 MMR who are guaranteed to play an Immortal Draft game may not queue for ranked as a party. Unranked is unchanged.
  
• Changed the way MMR gain/loss works in Immortal Draft games to better take into consideration the possible outcomes based on player draft choices.

In summary:

• If your MMR is 8500+, all of your ranked games will be Immortal Draft. All matches will be private. You're required have an official name registered. You cannot queue for ranked matches as a member of a party. Unranked is unchanged.
  
• If your MMR is 6500+, your ranked games will only be Immortal Draft if matched with a player above 8500 MMR. Otherwise you'll play using standard ranked match rules. Unranked is unchanged.

Patch 7.38b is out now, along with a new Dota Plus season. You can check out the 7.38b patchnotes here.

In addition, over the last few days we've addressed the following issues:

• Fixed Clinkz Burning Army skeletons being able to auto-cast Tar Bomb
  
• Fixed Templar Assassin Hidden Reach effects being visible to enemies
  
• Fixed Sven Level 10 Talent +10% Vanquisher Bonus Damage not working properly
  
• Fixed Ability Draft loading screen being stuck during draft phase when there are fewer than 10 players in the lobby.
  
• Drow Ranger Precision Aura from illusions no longer overrides her own bonus agility
  
• Fixed Ancient Apparition Ice Blast Shatter Threshold flickering when clicking on an enemy affected by ice blast
  
• Ability Draft: Doom: Devour: fixed player losing ability in first slot for the rest of the game after casting Devour
  
• Ability Draft: Doom: Devour: fixed permanently gaining passive aura from neutral creep
  
• Fixed Roshan Timer being broken when Templar Assassin Third Eye innate is active.
  
• Fixed Mark for Sell items not being collected by the courier if the courier did not start in the fountain when ordering it to deliver
  
• Fixed Mark for Sell items being returned to the hero if they were in the courier's inventory when delivering other items.
  
• Refined the alt-click chat messages on the Roshan Timer to match other alt-click messages.
  
• Refined alt-click chat messages on the Madstone indicator to better match other alt-click chat messages.
  
• Fixed Drow Ranger with the Sidestep Facet not triggering Silencer Last Word when Multishot finishes
  
• Fixed Viper Nosedive, which caused the caster model orientation to enter a bad state, allowing Rubick or any hero in Ability Draft to exploit this with certain abilities, causing them to remain permanently in the world.
  
• Fixed Jakiro Liquid Fire not working in Ability Draft
  
• Fixed Spell Lifesteal Amplification from Kaya (and it's combined items) not working

Over the last few days we've addressed the following issues:

• Fixed heroes in Ability Draft not having innate abilities
  
• Fixed Lotus Pool timers showing regular Dota game mode timings in Turbo
  
• Fixed minimap icons not showing for live spectators in player view
  
• Fixed some camps' spawnboxes being taller than Kunkka's Torrent height
  
• Fixed Tormentor spawning in undesirable locations while in Demo Mode
  
  
• Neutral Tooltip is better at guessing enchantment level
  
• Fixed Ironwood trees not providing extended healing duration when consumed with Tango
  
• Fixed Ninja Gear usage while smoked allowing you to re-apply Smoke of Deceit to your allies
  
• Fixed Phylactery not slowing enemies on proc
  
• Fixed Pirate's Hat causing the Death Cost tooltip to display a slightly incorrect amount
  
• Fixed Pyrrhic Cloak reflecting reflected damage
  
• Fixed Revenant's Brooch on Illusions dealing more damage than intended
  
  
• Fixed an issue where Scurry and Death Pact would have more than the max number of charges if the corresponding talent was taken after the ability was skilled
  
• Fixed various issues with Morphling's Morph
  
• Fixed various issues with Winter Wyvern's Winter's Curse
  
  
• Fixed Anti-Mage Magebane's Mirror not reducing mana when the caster doesn't have enough mana to spend
  
• Fixed Arc Warden's Flux with Aghanim's Scepter occasionally still silencing even if Flux was dispelled
  
• Fixed Crystal Maiden's Blueheart Floe not leveling up with Freezing Field
  
• Fixed Dazzle not getting Desolator charges when killing heroes while a Nothl Voyager
  
• Fixed Dazzle not getting Urn of Shadows charges when killing heroes while a Nothl Voyager
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Aghanim's Shard not providing Healing Amplification while in the Nothl Realm
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Nothl Projection not benefitting from Poison Touch talent upgrades in certain situations
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Nothl Projection granting more Town Portal Scrolls than desired in certain situations
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Nothl Projection putting Aeon Disk on cooldown
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Nothl Projection putting Refresher Orb going on cooldown
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Poison Touch debuff duration not increasing when used before casting ultimate (and in reverse)
  
• Fixed Dazzle's Soul being able to use Hand of Midas
  
• Fixed Dragon Knight's Corrosive Dragon's spells and Damage over Time effects getting blocked by Physical Block
  
• Fixed Dragon Knight's Wyrm's Wrath applying debuffs to teammates when denying
  
• Fixed Dragon Knight's Wyrm's Wrath with the Fire Dragon Facet unintentionally dealing damage to towers
  
• Fixed Dragon Knight's Wyrm's Wrath with the Fire Dragon Facet proccing twice per hit when in Elder Dragon Form
  
• Fixed Dragon Knight's Wyrm's Wrath with the Fire Dragon Facet AoE bonus not stacking with other sources of increased AoE
  
• Fixed Hoodwink's Level 20 Sharpshooter talent having blind spots in its vision path
  
• Fixed Invoker with Aghanim's Scepter gaining more levels of Quas, Wex, or Exort than intended
  
• Fixed Io's Tether not healing tethered targets from damage dealt with Aghanim's Shard
  
• Fixed Lion's Impale not benefitting from AoE bonuses if the AoE bonuses were acquired after leveling Impale
  
• Fixed Monkey King clones stealing gold with Pirate's Hat
  
• Fixed Morphling's Adaptive Strike with Flow facet not stunning targets if Morphling Morphed while the projectile was traveling
  
• Fixed Pangolier's Shield Crash Barrier putting Blink Dagger on cooldown when the barrier fully blocks the damage
  
• Fixed Primal Beast's Ferocity stacks being uncapped in certain situations
  
• Fixed Rubick being able to accrue Arcane Accumulation stacks from Nothl Projection's End Projection
  
• Fixed Rubick with an Aghanim's Scepter not receiving the Aghanim's Scepter upgrade from a stolen Shackles
  
• Fixed Puck's Phase Shift being interrupted by certain commands
  
• Fixed Riki's Tricks of the Trade being interrupted by certain commands
  
• Fixed Techies' Minefield Sign with Aghanim's Scepter triggering during the Cast Point
  
• Fixed Templar Assassin's Meld with Hidden Reach taking longer than expected to reach max attack range
  
• Fixed Windranger's Killshot executing targets at slightly higher than the stated thresholds
  
• Fixed Windranger's Level 25 Talent Focus Fire Kills Advance Cooldown by 18s not working correctly