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Comment by aoeuasdf1 | Hacker News Reader

Dota 2 isn't going anywhere. The current tournament has an $18+ million prize pool (and rising) - meaning Valve was paid about $72 million in compendium sales.

This is for a tournament that runs every year and is growing in popularity and size.

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I think you're right but I also can't help but think how the very existence of Dota 2 underscores Valve's lack of innovation in the past half decade or so. They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor and basically recoded it on their own gaming engine (Yes, I know there's plenty of quality of life upgrades they brought to the series, but it was nothing that wasn't too obvious or already in place by another MOBA).

In a business sense, this was an innovative move only in that it made Valve tons more money, but from an industry perspective, they couldn't have done less to move the needle.

It's one of the most uninteresting safe bet moves I've seen a company make in the gaming industry since Madden.

It was the common sense thing from a consumers perspective to make DotA 2 into a product. It's just funny that Blizzard didn't manage to be the ones to do it. I remember that at the time when DotA was a popular Warcraft Mod me and my friends were often talking about how Blizzard should do what Valve did with Counter Strike and hire the modders. In the end Valve made that obvious move themselves, but maybe it's their flat structure that makes it possible for them to absorb external talent that way more easily.

The actual innovation in Dota 2 was on the esports side. From setting up the $1 million International before the game was even released spawned an industry of professional players, sponsors, casters, personalities and production companies. The competitive Dota scene before Dota 2 came out was tiny in comparison.

Twitch was central to this as well, bigger tournaments meant increased viewers, increased viewers meant that Twitch could in turn sponsor even more tournaments.

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't league of legends more responsible for building the robust esports scene for moba's? It was already there when DotA2 came around, wasn't it?

League's first championship was held in June 2011 with a prize pool of $100,000 [1], and the first Dota 2 International was held in August 2011 with a prize pool of $1,600,000 [2]. Not that big of a time difference, and the difference in prize pools has only increased since then in favor of Dota 2.

Twitch was in baby shoes back in 2011 as well. Game streaming overall was still really small, and sites like own3d.tv held a large market share back then.

In addition, Valve built in-engine spectating into the game since day 1. You can watch other games live, or download replays and jump to any moment in time. League doesn't have similar tech even in 2016 [3], they are definitely far more focused on their casual players. League does have an extremely large playerbase in total, so their esports achievements are still remarkable due to sheer scale, but it's much more of a side-part of League than Dota.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends_World_Champi...

[2] http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/The_International/2011

[3] From what I understand there is no replay system at all, and the League spectator mode is very basic and lacks most of the features that Dota 2 has.

Per point #3, it's even gotten as far as becoming a meme in the League community. It's one of the most talked about missing features other than a sandbox mode, which Dota also has.

Any time a new feature is released, especially smaller ones, there's usually a good number of 'We got this but no <replay|sandbox> mode' comments.

So what? They bought Counter strike from Gooseman, they outsourced half life blue shift and opposing force, they bought the team behind team fortress, they bought the team behind left 4 dead, they bought the team behind dota, ...

I think everyone that plays dota is actually happy about that.

That comparison isn't completely fair: CS and TF were in their infancy when Valve got involved and Valve took big risks developing those games. Valve taking over DotA after DotA had existed for nearly a decade felt more like them trying to play catch up to LoL in a genre (market) of games that they had nothing in. Agreed, great for DotA players - but it didn't strike me as being a particularly impressive or interesting contribution to gaming.

I think it's pretty fair, CS was already popular (and played in tournaments), DotA was also just a mod for warcraft 3, far from being a real game, just maps you could play on.

I think your point of view is biased by the fact that you do not play dota, or do not like this genre, etc... It was a pretty big revolution in the dota genre.

No, that's incorrect - counter strike was first made in 1999 and purchased just one year later by Valve. Whatever tournaments there were they didn't look anything like the esports scene of today.

That's nothing like the DotA acquisition - DotA was more popular as a custom game than WC3 was itself and had been for nearly a decade. DotA is pretty much the genesis of the entire MOBA genre. There's no way you can discount that just because it ran on top of another game.

I played DotA for many years and am a huge fan of MOBA's. I don't disagree with you that it was a big revolution in the DotA genre, but if that's as high as Valve was aiming with the game, it's very disappointing given Valve's history of doing so much more than that. That's my point.

It was a boring, uninspired safe bet by a company that can do a lot better.

>They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor

What.

DotA is older than League of Legends, Icefrog was even screwed over by Pendragon (Riot Games cofounder) and Pendragon replaced the DotA-Allstars website with a LoL ad. Riot are also known to have taken many ideas from WIP heroes from DotA. If anything, Riot themselves surfed on the popularity of DotA and innovated very lightly.

I'm not saying Valve innovated by picking up Icefrog and making Dota2, but it's laughable to think that it was built on the back of LoL.

I think OP is referring to DotA being a custom map for Warcraft III.

CS:GO is in a similar situation, Valve may not be making new games any more but Dota2 and CS:GO aren't going anywhere and continue to give Gabe an even bigger pile of money to sleep on.

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