What is Dota 2?
Dota 2 is a free-to-play MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) video game where two teams consisting of five players must defend the Ancient - a protected structure located in their base. Each player controls a hero with unique skills and style of play and collects experience points and items that help them defeat the opposing team’s heroes. There are currently 123 playable characters, each with a unique design, strengths, and weaknesses. Players select their heroes during the pre-game drafting phase and become unavailable for other match participants (the most popular Dota 2 hero based on lifetime pick rate is melee character Pudge). A Dota 2 match usually lasts between 30 minutes and an hour.Is Dota 2 still popular?
While still being one of the heavyweights of eSports, Dota 2 significantly trails direct competitor League of Legends, and other, newer MOBA or battle royale game titles. In November 2022, Dota 2 had about 990 thousand peak concurrent players on Steam, while averaging around 450 thousand concurrent players throughout the year. Dota 2 has still a loyal base of players, but the game is not attracting any major new audiences as the MOBA market is very competitive.The game has a reputation for complexity and requires strong teamplay amidst very long matches, which can be a deterrent for new players. Additionally, an increasing amount of MOBA titles have become available on console or mobile, and DOTA 2 is still only available on PC. All these factors have led to Dota 2 not being as beginner friendly as more recent mobile-first titles in the MOBA genre such as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, League of Legends: Wild Rift or Pokémon Unite.
Dota 2 is one of the leading games on the streaming platform Twitch based on all-time views but current videos featuring the game are no longer among the most popular streamed content. In December 2022, the average weekly viewers of Dota 2 streams amounted to 38.2 thousand viewers. In contrast, League of Legends was doing much better with a seven-day average of 90.6 thousand viewers.
Dota 2 eSports
Despite not being the trendiest MOBA game out there, Dota 2 is still one of the most popular eSports games in the world. Every year Dota 2 tournaments attract hundreds of competitors and millions of viewers. In fact, The International (TI) – DOTA’s annual championship - ranks amidst the most watched eSports tournaments worldwide. TI 11, which took place in Singapore in October 2022, attracted approximately 1.75 million peak concurrent viewers from all over the world. The finals were held between Team Secret and Tundra Esports, which Tundra clinching the title with a 3-0 win.Since The International 2013, the tournament's prize pool has been crowdfunded through an in-game battle pass called the "Compendium", which raises money from players buying them to get exclusive in-game virtual goods and other bonuses. Dota’s 2022 championship prize pool reached 18.9 million U.S. dollars, the first year-over-year decline ever from a peak of 40 million U.S. dollars in 2021. Despite this drop, Dota 2 eSports matches are still worth a lot of money and thus highly popular with professional players - top Dota 2 players rank as among the highest earning eSports players worldwide.
