Why is the Dota2 battle pass failing?

What Valve’s marketing department doesn’t seem to understand is the fact that the Dota 2 community is very passionate about the game.

Many people who play Dota have been playing it for years and know all about its professional teams and its history. When the Battle Pass for The International is released, part of the reason why they spend $10, $30, or even $45 has to do with their desire to see the game and its professional scene thrive.

During the regular season, Valve does very little to promote Dota 2 and entice people to become esports competitors. So The International is supposed to make up for all of that by providing people with a great show, and the teams with a substantial prize pool.

What went wrong this year

Out of the blue, after nearly a decade of successful Battle Pass releases, Valve decided to release the Battle Pass in two stages and give the players only 25% of the first Battle Pass sales. In other words, they went from giving them 25% of the money to just 12.5%. This level of greed did not go well with the community.

The gaming community is very sensitive to these kinds of shenanigans. In recent years, Blizzard Entertainment has ruined its reputation by abandoning ethical principles and releasing a game, Diablo Immortal, that’s as pay-to-win as you can get. Now, Valve seems to be headed in the same direction and nobody understands why.

This is a highly successful company that really doesn’t need the extra millions that it now attempts to get by covertly taking it from the players’ pockets. So more than ever, the Dota 2 community seems to have decided not to invest in the Battle Pass. And the numbers speak for themselves.

The cause of the problem is obvious because the player base has not decreased since 2021. In fact, it went up by around 10%. So you can’t say that the game is dying. The only thing that’s dying is people’s trust in Valve.

And the reason is simple: we went from numerous $1 million and even $3 million tournaments per year to what we had this year: 2 Majors that offered $1 million in total and almost nothing else. Riyadh Masters had nothing to do with Valve and was purely an ESL event. So you can’t count that in. On its own, the Dota Professional Circuit is almost dead.

The International 11 prize pool predictions

The prize pool for The International is sitting at around $11.3 million, with only 6 weeks left to go until the end of the tournament. At this rate, it won’t even reach $20 million. Last year it was $40 million. So Valve will need to reevaluate its marketing strategy because it’s clearly not working.

Header: Valve Corporation