Dota 2 News

Earlier this year, Dota 2 developer Valve announced it was aiming to release the multiplayer game's next Hero by "the end of November", however that launch has now been pushed back to the month following. In a new dev post, the studio has explained that it needed a bit more time. As such, the new character will instead be heading to the MOBA game in mid-December, along with the next gameplay update.

"We wanted to give you another quick update about some of the upcoming things we're working on," the studio says in the post. "On the gameplay front, our original plan for the new Hero was November 30, however she needs a bit more time to cosy up for the winter. We will be releasing her, along with the 7.28 gameplay update, in mid-December." Beyond this, there aren't any details to lap up about who this Hero will be, exactly, other than that she'll be a she.

Players are no doubt excited to find out more, given - unlike MOBAs such as League of Legends - new character arrivals in Dota 2 are pretty few-and-far-between. So far in 2020, there have been no new additions to the roster, and just three new Heroes joined the game last year - Mars, Snapfire, and Void Spirit.

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Valve has revealed that the 2021 Dota Pro Circuit will kick off on January 18. This will see 16 teams within two divisions going head to head in each of the six Regional Leagues. The best of the bunch will then qualify for the first Major of the season. More info on the precise scheduling is soon expected to arrive.

While news on the Pro Circuit's return is encouraging, there's still no update on The International 10. The tournament, which currently has the biggest prize pool ever for an esports event, is still to be rescheduled after being postponed due to the pandemic.

In a brief update blog, the developer also reconfirmed that the new season starting on December 1 will feature a seasonal quest reset for players, a new treasure, and more fresh gameplay content to get stuck into.

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A Valve employee has apologised for misusing his power to manually suspend a Dota 2 player following an in-game disagreement.

As spotted by Dot Esports, Reddit user u/minijuanjohndoe posted yesterday claiming that he had been given to low-priority status by a Valve developer after the pair argued during a match. The employee then told minijuanjohndoe "do you know who you are talking to" before using his position at Valve to manually suspend him and list him as low-priority. It now transpires that the employee is Sean Vanaman, who works for the studio Campo Santo that was recently acquired by Valve. Vanaman has posted an apology to the player, reversed his suspension, and claims that Valve will now be removing the ability to manually ban players entirely following the incident.

"The team looked into this case, and concluded the user clearly did not deserve the ban," Vanaman writes. "Even if the user did deserve a ban however, we all think it's clear that manually banning users is not a good idea because of how hard it is to be objective in Dota games that you are in. My mistake in this case being a sterling example. As employees, we should have no special privilege when playing Dota."

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We've all been there - a match where something's gone wrong, or you end up frustrated with your teammates. But I doubt you've ever had the power to get someone banned over a gameplay disagreement, and it seems one Valve employee was unable to restrain themselves from doing so, as Firewatch co-creator Sean Vanaman has now apologised for giving out an unwarranted manual ban.

The situation began when Dota 2 player minijuanjohndoe posted on Reddit claiming they'd been sent to low priority - essentially a temporary matchmaking penalty - simply for suggesting a tactic the Valve employee didn't like (via Dot Esports). "So can employees just send you to low priority for telling the team to let mid tower go and he just thinks its a bad idea?," minijuanjohndoe asked, having discovered he'd been bickering with a Valve employee during their argument over tactics. minijuanjohndoe provided an image of their behaviour score to prove their innocence, and later gave the name of the player who had given them the penalty - Vanaman.

"The team looked into this case, and concluded the user clearly did not deserve the ban," Vanaman said in response to the post. "Even if the user did deserve a ban however, we all think it's clear that manually banning users is not a good idea because of how hard it is to be objective in Dota games that you are in. My mistake in this case being a sterling example. As employees, we should have no special privilege when playing Dota."

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