G-1, the Chinese Dota 2 league, has been suspended by organisers 17173, following a series of DDoS attacks that caused players to disconnect during their games. The attacks began on Sunday, affecting players from Team Dignitas, Evil Geniuses and Kaipi. 17173 say they are working to rectify the issues, and have sought technical advice from Valve.

"Over the past few days, matches on the DOTA2 European servers have been faced with a serious series of DDoS attacks from unknown sources, which has caused players to continuously disconnect and ultimately made it impossible to carry on the competition," writes a G-1 spokesperson on Reddit. "In light of the current situation, 17173 and 2P.com have decided to postpone the G-1 Western Qualifiers while waiting for advice on technical solutions from Valve.

"What next? We've shared a guide with all the teams in the G-1 Western Qualifiers yesterday on steps to take to prevent DDoS attacks. Additionally, communications are established with Valve, reporting what has happened in the past few days of G-1 Champions League, along with related details regarding what we know about the as-yet unidentified DDoS attacker(s)."

Sunday's attack forced a mass disconnect from members of Evil Geniuses, with admins ultimately declaring their opponents Absolute Legends the winners due to their in-game advantage at the time.

While the source of the attacks isn't known, one 4Chan poster claimed responsibility, saying it was to prevent him losing a $20,000 bet. This is 4Chan though, so pinch of salt and all.

It'll be interesting to see what measures and recommendations G-1's organisers implement to halt future attacks. Certainly this isn't the first time players have been hit by a DDoS. Ultimately, it seems teams and organisers are going to need to be more rigorous in their protection of players IP addresses - taking steps to make them less easily accessible.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Yesterday, we reported on a study published by DFC Intelligence, claiming that Dota 2 had overtaken League of Legends as the most played game in North America and Europe, and citing data from XFire and other unnamed sources. But the conclusions of the report seemed problematic - Riot had previously announced five million concurrent players worldwide, and while Dota 2 is undeniably growing in popularity, to surpass it in two key regions would have been a big deal.

As we reported at the time, with DFC's methodology unclear, it was impossible to confirm their findings. To find out more, I got in touch with David Cole, owner of DFC, for clarification. Additionally Riot, eager to retain their title, have provided some of their own statistics, which suggest that League of Legends is still the king.

In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, a Riot spokesperson said that League of Legends sees "over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West shard." Considering Dota 2's all-time concurrent player peak is 325,897 users worldwide, it would seem as though LoL is indeed ahead.

DFC's David Cole provided us with information on how they arrived at their conclusion. "We do have access to all Xfire data and they are a key source," he said. "However, we also do a lot of data mining of multiple sources to get a better sample. This includes forums etc.

"The thing with us is we are getting core gamers in North America and Europe only. LOL has a ton of users in markets we don’t track.

"I will say in the past people have thought our numbers for LOL were impossibly high. Diablo III had a short lived spike but nothing has come close. LOL has consistently showed usage an order of magnitude above other products just in the markets we tracked. You add in additional markets like China and it is clearly larger.

"Dota 2 is a new entity so we don’t know where things will be headed. Diablo III showed a leap but it went back down whereas LOL has been consistent. But to me the news wasn’t that LOL is declining, it is more about the success of Dota 2 in some of these core Western markets."

Cole also clarified that the report specifically measured hours played, and not number of users.

Riot countered this point, with a spokesperson telling us that, "back in October Riot reported 1+ billion hours played per month and 3 million concurrent players globally (then, last month reported 5 million concurrent... so you can extrapolate the growth in playtime and other stats from there)." Although, again, this covers worldwide play, not the specific NA and European regions of DFC's study.

"Riot is actually going to give us some actual numbers so we can compare," Cole continued. "LOL does have a lot more users and we may have underestimated LOL. Thing is, we have never seen anything like it, so have been pretty conservative. But Dota 2 is still big."

Which is true enough. From all of this, what remains clear is that both MOBAs are enjoying a huge amount of success. And, of course, it's worth keeping in mind that Dota 2 is still in beta. While invites are still available, it seems likely that even that small barrier would have an effect on the number of people playing the game. There are vast audiences for both games, and we won't know Dota's true effect until it's fully available, and free, on Steam.

As for the report, the problem is gaining accurate data at such a granular level. Using the publicly released figures, we can just about make comparisons over concurrent users at a purely worldwide level. And yes, here, it's clear that League of Legends is ahead of the curve. Finding a sure-fire, undeniable method for tracking hours played in two specific regions is much harder. Based on the information Riot have provided, it seems likely that LoL is at the top of that list too. But without a standardised and consistent method of comparing data between different companies, it's always going to be hard to establish an accurate figure.

Ultimately, I question how relevant the report's scope is to free-to-play games. Having an idea of what's popular and consistently played in North America and Europe is probably useful data if you're making games in the AAA space. But free-to-play's strength is in its ease of access worldwide; in regions like China where traditional publishing models have yet to, or even can't, take hold. Essentially, PC gaming is both leading the way for alternative funding schemes, and blurring the lines of how they relate back to the idea of "Western" gaming.

Original Story: Dota 2 has surpassed League of Legends as the most played "core" PC title in the West through the first quarter of 2013, according to a report by DFC Intelligence. If accurate, it's a big coup for Valve's MOBA, which is both "technically" unrealeased and "technically" not free. Of course, as those heavy ironic quote marks imply, neither of those facts mean much when Steam has become so flooded with invites that you could run out onto the street, shout "I NEED A DOTA," and be guaranteed that some passing stranger would hand you one. I'm serious. Try it.

The report, as covered by GamesIndustry.biz, measures players from North America and Europe using a variety of sources, including real-time stats from the 23 million registered Xfire users. DFC found that both MOBAs far surpassed the third most popular PC game, World of Warcraft.

"Usage of League of Legends has been steady the past year and surprisingly the huge success of Dota 2 did not seem to cut into its popularity as much as would be expected," said DFC analyst Jeremy Miller.

There was growth shown in PC gaming as a whole, too, with DFC reporting a combined usage rise for the Top 20 PC games: 22% over the first quarter of 2012, and 8% over the last quarter. DFC analyst David Cole pointed to some of the games that have caused this bump: "The past year has seen numerous blockbuster PC games that have really helped drive usage. This includes among others Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Battlefield 3, Minecraft, World of Tanks and Valve's Counter-Strike series."

Okay, caveat time: Firstly, the DFC are only interested in "core" titles, not casual and browser games. That means Facebook's litany of horrors - including Zynga's crumbling empire - isn't being analysed. More pressingly, we don't have access to the exact methodology the DFC used for its conclusion. For instance, while a snapshot is next to meaningless compared to the overall trend, XFire is currently reporting League of Legends as being way ahead of Dota 2, at 21,075 players to 2,330.

Essentially, unless the stats are coming directly (and accurately) from the developers, it's hard to see how there wouldn't be at least some sample bias. While the DFC's report is likely a good representation of general trends, it's hard to know if it represents the full story. Certainly Steam are currently reporting 197,507 concurrent Dota 2 players - but even then, their publicly available statistics aren't granular enough to separate out the Western regions.

If there are two statements we can be sure of with some certainty, they would be 1) Bloody hell, MOBAs are popular, and 2) Hooray for PC games!

Update: Riot have questioned DFC's findings, telling Games Industry that League of Legends sees "over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West shard." Note that Dota 2's highest ever concurrent player count, according to SteamGraph, is 325,897 users worldwide.

We contacted DFC's David Cole for more info. He pointed out that their findings were based on hours played rather than concurrent users, stating that "LOL does have a lot more users and we may have underestimated LOL. Thing is we have never seen anything like it so have been pretty conservative. But Dota 2 is still big." The press release announcing DFC's report has since been removed.

Dota 2 has been updated with its first new hero in six weeks. Rigwarl the Bristleback is the phlegm chucking pig-hedgehog thing in question. He's kind of what I imagine a dark, gritty reboot of Sonic the Hedgehog would look like. Except yellow. An initiator, Bristleback can slow enemies with a stacked attack, has a 360 degree spike attack, and location-based damage resistance.

Here's what Bristleback's hiding under his spiny sleeves.

Viscous Nasal Goo: A mucal discharge attack that lowers armour and reduces movement speed. Gross.
Quill Spray: 360 degree projectile attack which gets a damage bonus if you repeat within 10 seconds. Ignores damage blocking items and abilities.
Bristeback: This eponymous ability reduces damage from the side and back, and auto Quill Sprays for every 250 damage he takes from the back.
Warpath: A passive buff to movement speed and damage that stacks with every spell cast.

And you can see him in action, courtesy of this DotaCinema video:



Also! Vengeful Spirit gets a new model, Wisp gets renamed Io, and Beastmaster has some voice work done. Full patch notes here.

Thanks, PCGamesN.