Dota 2 to be free-to-play with "twists"

Valve boss Gabe Newell has elaborated a little on what we can expect from Dota 2 in terms of payment models.

"It's going to be free-to-play - that's the easiest way to think of it. It'll have some twists, but that's the easiest way for people to think about it," said Newell, on the Seven Day Cooldown podcast.

When asked what those twists might be, Newell responded on a bit of a tangent.

"The issue that we're struggling with quite a bit is something I've talked about before, which is: how do you properly value people's contributions to a community?

"We're trying to figure out ways so that people who are more valuable to everyone else, that that's recognised and accomodated. We all know people where, if they're playing THEN we want to play, and there are other people where if they're playing, we'd like to be on the other side of the planet, so it's just a question of coming up with mechanisms so that we recognise and reward people for doing things which are valuable to other groups of people."

Newell gave a few examples, noting that a user creating "a really good guide" is the sort of thing they're trying to accomodate.

While it remains to be seen how this will work in practice, it sounds like those who do things for the good of the community will be rewarded. An interesting model, certainly.

Valve's sequel to Defense of the Ancients is currently in an invite-only beta, and is expected to launch sometime this year. Taking Valve Time into account, it seems likely we'll all be able to play it before 2020.