Dota 2
Dota 2 is played ten at a time, in two teams of five, and each player controls one hero. The team that first destroys the other side's main building, the Ancient, wins. The idea itself did not come from Valve. It all started in 2003 with Defense of the Ancients, a fan-made mod for Warcraft III created by a designer known as Eul.
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Later the mod was run by a designer called IceFrog. Valve hired him to make the sequel, and in October 2009 he announced it himself on his blog. The game came out in July 2013, and in 2015 it moved to the Source 2 engine, making Dota 2 the first game to run on it.
Since 2013 players have also funded the prize pool of The International championship, through purchases inside the game. In 2021 that added up to more than 40 million dollars. Guinness World Records lists it as the largest prize pool of a single esports tournament up to that point.
Getting in is hard. Reviewers complained about the steep learning curve and the complexity while praising the gameplay itself, and the community is often called hostile. Players leave 80% positive out of 2,810,661 reviews, critics give it 90 on Metacritic. By our Recommended Score it is #219 of 4,736 games.
Liked it? Try Dota Underlords, an auto battler Valve built from Dota Auto Chess, a mode players invented, and SMITE, where you fight as gods and figures from myth.
Major updates
The Dark Carnival · Jun 2026All 5
System requirements
Minimum GeForce 8600 · 4 GB RAM · 60 GBiSteam Deck PlayableMin & recommended
| Minimum | |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows 7 or newer |
| Processor | Dual core from Intel or AMD at 2.8 GHz |
| Memory | 4 GB |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce 8600/9600GT, ATI/AMD Radeon HD2600/3600 |
| DirectX | 11 |
| Storage | 60 GB |
From the game’s Steam store page.
