A video game leak is never a good thing. But when there’s EP3 code inside it, revealing what weapons we’ll be using, representing the first substantial information we’ve gotten regarding Episode Three since late 2007, can you really call it a bad thing? Well… I suppose you can, but no matter! Read on for more.

It turns out that a Vietnamese beta tester has leaked Dota 2’s entire game client, as well as all of its files, to the Internet. The leak appears to be playable – but do you really want to risk having your Steam account blocked just so you can play an illegal leak? Besides, you can’t even play online! What’s Dota without online play? Nothing.

In any case, the leak is already being datamined, and people have found some wondrous things – from the placeholders Valve uses for their spell icons, to the one phrase every single Dota hero has in common, all the speech files of all of the heroes, every single backstory of every single hero, a massive pastebin containing just about every caption string in the whole game, a test model for a lovely hat (Dota 2 has hats? What a surprise!), various in-game models, all the way to… some very interesting game code. Let’s take a look at that right now:

/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_icegun.cpp /src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_concrete.cpp /src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_liquid.cpp /src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_metal.cpp /src/game/server/ep3/weapon_flamethrower.cpp

Oof! Oh, damn. Be right back!

Okay, got my new underpants on. That’s right – an ice gun, a flamethrower, and some sort of Weaponizer thing, which utilizes concrete, metal, and liquid (according to Portal 2: The Final Hours, the Weaponizer was originally developed within Valve’s 2008 Directed Design Experiments). And the code can’t possibly be that old – Dota 2 only began development in late 2009.

There’s more interesting stuff in the links above – some sort of in-game store featuring bundles, gear, tools and effects, as well as an option to view “new” items. I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like micro-transaction. Could Dota 2 have that as well, and does that mean it’ll be a free-to-play title? At this point, does that seem so unlikely?

There’s also some code labelled “sob”, with mentions of “func_nebula”, “sob_server_ship_system” and “sob_flightplan”. Could Valve be working on some sort of entirely new game focusing on space flight and combat? Well, in any case: mysterious!

In any case, you won’t be getting any links to the leak from here, and we strongly advise you not to seek it out. Sure, for Valve it might be great for feedback purposes, but it’s still a loss for them and the dedicated beta testers. Still, I have to admit that this stuff has me quite excited for Dota 2… and, yes, Half-Life 2: Episode Three. A flamethrower! Would you imagine that.