Dota 2 Won’t Be Out Until 2012, Could Go F2P
By Alex Co | August 18, 2011 | News | No comments | Share
The Dota 2 tournament “The International” is still going on at gamesom, after that there’s the beta. and a lot of waiting. As Gabe Newell, president of Valve, has just confirmed that Dota 2 won’t ship this year.
We'll just go into progressively wider and wider distribution. I don't think it'll be shipped until next year.Newell on Dota 2 releasing in 2012
Dota 2 was originally planned for release before the year’s up, but Newell adds, “with a game like this, you just keep shipping. You add new heroes. You try out new game modes. You are constantly tweaking item and hero balance. It’s very much an ongoing thing.”
While it looks like Dota 2′s release is being figured out, the game’s business model is far from being settled.
In terms of the game going free-to-play (F2P), Newell states:
We don't know. We don't have plans yet. The problem isn't to figure out what your monetisation strategy is. If you have something with a super careful monetisation strategy and it sucks, it doesn't matter.
The most important thing is to do something that resonates well with the existing Dota players and creates a vehicle for new players to join into the community. That's the hard problem. That's the interesting one to solveNewell on Dota 2's business model
Will the game going F2P convince Dota 1 players to finally jump ship? If so, can Valve also convince the large userbase for Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends to go Dota 2 as well?
