The currently most popular Dota 2 mod “Auto Chess” gained a lot of traction within the last couple of months. A lot of high viewer streamers streamed it on Twitch and attracted waves of new players to download Dota 2 just for Auto Chess even if they don’t feel like playing actual Dota 2. During peak times, Auto Chess hits up to 350 thousand players at a given moment, which has revived Dota 2 on the Steam player graphs.

Valve has been trying to get their hands on Auto Chess for a while, which makes sense because Auto Chess could be a new and indeed very profitable genre in the gaming market because Auto Chess seems to retain it’s high player count even though the matchmaking system is unpolished, along with many balance issues and no past game history for those that enjoy looking at their stats. On top of that, various companies are applying to trademark the name “Auto Chess” before it gets taken. According to a Chinese government database, around 10 businesses have applied for the trademark just during January, including Tencent– the Chinese gaming giant, owner of League of Legends and many other popular gaming titles.

Creators of the Dota 2 Auto Chess custom game mode, Drodo Studio, recently published an image sneak peek on Weibo— a Chinese blogging platform, about what they’ve been up to lately.

The image they posted shows their mascot bird Drodo (which is actually based on “Drodo the Druffin” courier from Dota 2) holding what seems to be a smartphone, along with a caption that says “Coming Soon”– teasing a possible release of Auto Chess for mobile phones. In the post description, Drodo Studio has noted that it hasn’t licensed its game to any outside company yet.

Mobile gaming, especially in China, is a very big market and Chinese players are hyped that they are going to be able to play an Auto Chess on mobile phones in the near future, along with rest of the world.

Even though the Drodo is based on Dota 2 assets, the chess pieces don’t seem to be as these chess piece shadows have no similarities to any Dota 2 heroes so it’s still unknown whether or not Valve is going to be working with Drodo Studio.

Currently Dota 2 Auto Chess is sitting on 5.7 million subscribers– and this number is still expanding! Drodo Studio developers also said they’re thinking of hiring more staff and expanding their marketing team as it’s currently just four people who made and are maintaining the Auto Chess custom game.

When is Auto Chess coming out on mobile phones?

The release date of Auto Chess for smartphones is still unknown although it has a high chance of coming out in late 2019. or early 2020. We’re sure that the Drodo Studio marketing team will keep teasing new Auto Chess mobile game information and we’ll keep this article up to date!

On which devices is Auto Chess coming out?

There are rumors that Auto Chess mobile is coming out only for Android and iOS smartphones, but such an original and unique game could possibly expand even to consoles and PC.

Update – Auto Chess Standalone Game Is Officially Happening!

Valve seems to have lost the Auto Chess fight. Auto Chess is officially launching only on mobile devices (Android and iOS) which was confirmed on the official Zizouqi Auto Chess Website which will be their main site for the Chinese version of the game.

The Auto Chess mobile game art looks great and unique, it is rumored that internal testing of the Auto Chess mobile game will start in late March. And it’s so far been confirmed that the game will be released in China and Korea but the Autochess website also tells us about “playing Auto Chess on mobiles, globally” so an international version of the website should be coming up soon.

As of now, we can only see the official art of 7 Auto Chess mobile game chess pieces but there are a lot more to come.

Currently only Chinese players can pre-register for the game on their website in order to have access to Auto Chess earlier and get Candy rewards for free once it launches. In order to pre-register you’ll have to have a Chinese phone number in order to complete the SMS verification process.

Additionally, from the official Auto Chess website we can see that Drodo Studio intends to reward all the players who supported them by buying Dota Auto Chess Candy codes.

If you link your Steam account with Auto Chess you’ll get additional candies once the official Auto Chess on smartphones is launched.

Purchased CD-KEY Candies

40 (Dota 2 Custom Game) = 200 Autochess (Mobile)

200 (Dota 2 Custom Game) = 800 Autochess (Mobile)

640 (Dota 2 Custom Game) = 2000 Autochess (Mobile)

Additional Gift Candies Per Games Player

1-15 (Games on Dota 2 Arcade) = 200 (Mobile)

15-30 (Games on Dota 2 Arcade) = 350 (Mobile)

30+ (Games on Dota 2 Arcade) = 450 (Mobile)

Lastly, if the reservation count of pre-registers for Auto Chess on phones hits 5 million, every reserved player will get rewarded with 888 Candies for free!

Have you tried Dota 2 Auto Chess? Do you think they can succeed with such a new idea? We’d love to hear your opinions and of course if you find out any additional information and sneak-peeks for Auto Chess on mobile, leave us a comment below!