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Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

I'll also add, as a regular dota player, that they don't just "get rent" out of it.

First, the game is free to play and very deep as-is. There is no missing feature or add-on to pay for in order to have the full game experience, and the experience is amazing.

Second, they update it every month and managed to keep it interesting through the years. It's an incredible feat.

In the end, it's one of the few places where I'm more than happy to pay micro transactions for virtual hats and idiotic gimmics. Because they do a hell of a job.

Of course I would love a portal 3. But I'm not disapointed of what they are doing right now. They still rock.

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Hell, they still seem to support the original Half-Life. According to the file metadata, the hl binary on my machine has been rebuilt about a month ago. That makes it 20 years; better than Windows.

IIRC, Steam's DRM modifies binaries on disk to inextricably link them to the user account. That might be the reason for the recent modified timestamp if you installed it recently, not an update to the original binary.

There was a security fix update in April: https://steamcommunity.com/games/70/announcements/detail/375...

I mostly agree with you, but DotA plus is a shift towards subtly pay-to-win features. It's always surprising when a subscription lapses and I find out something is a DotA plus feature and not just part of the game.

I have dota plus. It doesn't give you any advantage on the current game. It merely lets you learn more about the current meta on the long run, faster than keeping up with all youtubers. Even pick stats and suggestions will not make you win more. It just teaches you.

Teaching is not unfair in my book, and worth money so I find it a very well balanced paid feature.

I played LOL before, and their rune and pick system is definitely pay to win.

All in all, given the size of dota, I'm actually amazed that so much of it is free. I played it years before spending a cent, and wondered how they could be sustainable.

> I have dota plus. It doesn't give you any advantage on the current game.

ranked roles

Also a dota player, D+ doesn't give you any advantage. I saw someone down thread claiming ranked roles is P2Win which is just absolutely ridiculous.

To be fair, Dota hasn't changed that much since W3 Mod days in terms of overall gameplay, yes there are talents and the map has changed but it's still 5 v 5 , 3 lanes, and you need to destroy the ancient. The only thing that has radically changed since Icefrog joined Valve is how it was monetized by using the Marketplace and cosmetics to rake in huge profits.

I would argue that the "gameplay" part is due largely to Icefrog's influence and philosophy regarding hero designs and reccurring patches.

IMO the game has never been more enjoyable and while I haven't gotten a battle pass since 2016 due to the fact that they have gotten too expensive with little value, this year's is actually really tempting with the new map skin, arcanas, persona, and announcer pack.

I can second this. The Dota team at Valve managed to continuously deliver great content in form of updates and tournaments.

> There is no missing feature or add-on to pay for in order to have the full game experience

Don't start me about the ranked roles in DotaPlus.

TIL, I learned that the RR queue is the same as the normal ranked one. Ouch...

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