Dota 2 reaches its highest player base peak in 5 years

The first recorded Steam data about Dota 2’s player base dates back to August 2012. Back then, the game had 55.000 average concurrent players. By August 2013, the number had grown to 330.000. So the game grew by 600% in just one year.

By August 2015, just two years later, Dota 2 had 606.000 average concurrent players. The peak was reached in February 2016: 709.000 ACP. At that time, around 13 million people were playing the game on a monthly basis. And then, instead of continuing to grow, everything went downhill.

Dota 2’s current player base

Recently, Dota 2 has hit 515.000 average concurrent players, the highest number in the last five years. The game is probably played right now by around 9-10 million people. This is not a bad number considering the fact that Dota 2 has been around for 10 years. After 10 years, most games are completely dead.

We’ve seen lots of games, even esports, rise to fame only to lose their audience after the first few years. But games like Dota 2 endure for a long time. They may not be the most famous, but they are the most consistent.

Everyone who plays Dota 2 is in it for the long run. This is not a game that you can play casually once a month and forget about it. You need to play regularly to become competent, and its vast number of options makes it infinitely replayable.

What caused the recent player base growth

Even though we don’t know for sure what caused the 13% increase in the last 30 days, we can suspect that The International 2022 might have had something to do with it.

The location of the event was Singapore and the Asian fans might have liked what they saw. The tournament had a prize pool of almost $19 million, which is a huge amount for the world of esports.

Lots of people get encouraged when they see those kinds of prizes and they think to themselves that one day, they will be the ones to lift the Aegis of Champions. That’s a bit unlikely, but they wouldn’t have to reach that level if Valve made it a bit easier to survive in Dota 2 without getting a top six result at The International.

The prize pools of the other tournaments are quite small right now and everyone’s complaining about the situation. But in terms of its growth, Dota 2 seems to be doing just fine. It remains to be seen if the game’s newest players will still be here in three months.

Header: Valve Corporation