After several failed attempts to “party up” with others, a local Dota 2 player has begun to suspect that his friends are deliberately dodging his requests to play.

“I never get invited to parties any more,” said the player we_need_wards, who first became suspicious when he noticed many of his friends appeared offline on Steam for days on end despite casually mentioning details of games they had played recently.

“They always say ‘maybe later’,” said the player, who has since changed his name to mid_only_plz. “When they are online, they say their party is full.”

After checking match histories, ESEX determined that his friends’ parties were actually not full and often contained upwards of two to three empty slots. In fact, sometimes his friends filled parties with random teammates they did not know, even when those players were Russian.

“I think they might not want to play with me because my MMR is too high,” said can_u_call_missing??_ok, “or maybe they think low priority is too hard because I’m muted?” A widespread belief among party-less players is that the lack of parties may stem from jealousy or fear from friends who do not know “how to play correctly.”

The player, who now goes by report_my_team_all_feeders, said his friends typically don’t respond for 60 to 90 seconds before replying with “Sorry, full stack” or “Just found a game” and now believes they may not be telling him the truth, especially when he encountered an enemy team of players whose IDs clearly resembled his friends’ with one or two letters altered.

The lack of invites appears to be extended to real life parties as well, according to the player’s mother.

