Is Dota 2 Dying? The Popular MOBA Just Hit The Lowest Player Count In A Long Time

Categories: Dota 2 News | Published by: Anel Pervan Anel Pervan

Dota2 is one of the most successful games of all time. Unfortunately, today we are answering the question is Dota 2 dying?

Only a few games come even close to the player count, the number of tournaments and tournament money that Dota 2 has.

According to SteamCharts, 2019 was a great year for Dota2. In March of 2019, the peak player count hit a million players for the first time after February of 2017, and it was looking like it was going to be a promising year for the game.

Unfortunately, the peak player count kept on dropping. Fast forward to January of 2020, and the peak player count hit only 627,790 in the last 30 days.

That number is the lowest recorded number since January of 2014.

Of course, to have complete information, we’ll have to wait January to end, but it doesn’t look bright for Dota2.

The average number of players at any given time is 383,960, which is the same as December of 2019, but it’s still the lowest since December of 2013.

Valve is struggling to keep a stable number of players and continuously changing the game with patches and new heroes. They manage to bring back some players, but that doesn’t last long.

Dota 2 Is In A Vicious Circle

With the player count dropping down, the best players of the game, the top 1% are going to have a harder time finding games.

Instead of waiting 30 minutes to find a game, they will create new, smurf accounts. Now the game is going to pair them with players that are far worse than they are, and the best players will dominate those games.

The average players will get frustrated because they have to play against the 1%, and they can’t do anything since the skill gap is enormous and they will eventually quit the game.

(Image credits https://www.reddit.com/user/Anomalina89/)

With fewer players playing, content creators on YouTube, and streaming websites might decide a game change is necessary to keep their monthly earnings up.

Since Dota2 is spending literally zero money on marketing, losing on content creators will hurt them even more. Less popularity means fewer new players coming into the game.

It’s a vicious circle that will make more and more players quit the game and slow down the number of players coming into the game. That is the biggest reason why is Dota 2 dying.

What are the possible solutions?

One of the solutions to the problem might be making the game newbie-friendly. Certainly, it’s not at the moment.

There are 117 heroes and hundreds of items in Dota2. A new player doesn’t have a clue what’s happening around him for the first 100 hours of gameplay. That’s too much time to invest for someone who is just trying out the game.

It’s a cruel and punishing game, and other players aren’t kind either. If a player is bad at the game, he is told hurtful and toxic words, even curse words by his own teammates.

A chat filtering system should exist for the first 100 hours, and then you get the option to turn it off. It might remove some of the toxicity towards new players.

Another suggestion would be bringing back a limited hero pool of only 20 heroes that existed in the past. Newcomers could only play that mode to learn the basics, and it’s a lot easier to learn 20 heroes than it is to learn 117.

Valve has a lot to do, and we can only hope they’ll do everything in their power to keep the beautiful game alive and growing.