posted by NanaKrustofski,
Dota 2 is one of the most popular games in the entire world. It is also the most played game on Steam, with a peak of over 750.000 people playing at the same time in the past 30 days. And still, when it comes to numbers, it often lacks behind its "rival" League of Legends. Recently, users showed discontent towards Valve's marketing strategies – but are these statements justified? A few days ago, Riot Games celebrated the tenth anniversary of League of Legends. And they spoiled their community with a range of exceptional presents: a mobile version of their main title, one for their autobattle mode, an animated series and four brand new games. These include a fighting game with the characters of LoL, a card game featuring their champions (similar to Artifact) and an esports manager game with the Chinese LoL teams.

With the tenth anniversary of Dota 2 and The International 2020 slowly approaching as well, some parts of the community of course have high expectations of Valve as well. But there has been some critique on the way Valve is advertising its flagship game. Not enough excitement, not enough specials, not enough love. This would also be one of the reasons why there are less players than in LoL.





Some of their approaches seem to have caught on pretty well, but then caused some disappointment. Artifact got abandoned quickly. The famous Diretide was cancelled. Siltbreaker was so popular, that an expanded version was promised – but has yet to be released.

However, Valve would have access to a treasure chest of possible options to make specials and attract new players. The incredibly deep and wide-ranged lore begs to be used to create additional content beyond Dota 2, such as more graphic novels, cinematics or even an animated series.



Of course, a company can never please all their fans. Therefore, they will not be able to create the perfect product. Also there will always be flaws. A lot of players do not even agree on that criticism of Valve, or simply are not interested in specials and rather just play the main game. And despite Valve not exploiting the full potentional of the Dota 2 universe, the game is still number one on Steam. Fans keep playing it, they keep enjoying it and the game stays popular and successful.





Do you think Valve should add more specials and change their way of marketing?



Photo credit: Valve

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