Dota 3: yes, no, maybe?

Dota 3 is nothing but a silly joke by PCGamesN, but as they say “I want to believe”. And even though Gabe Newell is not a big fan of number 3, we can still imagine how it might become a reality and in which circumstances.

Lots of people might say that there’s no way Dota 3 is ever happening, but actually we can point out a couple of factors to prove skeptics wrong. First of all, Valve still got it as they recently (yes, two years ago is considered to be recent when we talk about Valve) released Half-Life: Alyx, a long-awaited title that took 13 years to be delivered to its fans, but proved that the company can successfully surprise gamers with something other than new skins for Dota heroes.

Ignore the fact that people want to talk about Dota 3 mostly before some big cybersport events or unusual updates, because now it is time to look on the bright side! Valve released disappointing Artifact, followed by amazing, but short-lived Dota Underlords (people still discuss it on Reddit, by the way!) and Dota: Dragon's Blood on Netflix already has 2 seasons + added a new hero to Dota’s pool!

The history of Dota

But let's take a step back to the beginning of it all. Originally, DotA was added as a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos in 2003, and only ten years later it finally became its own separate game. The release date of Dota 2 is 2013, but Reborn (a global update that included such features as new interface, new engine and many other things) launched just two years later. So we can see that Dota 2 remains interesting to players even 7 years after the last large-scale update! Not a bad result, just like Valve likes it, but does this mean that players do not get tired of playing this MOBA? Let's try to analyze this with the help of Steam’s official statistics.

Steamcharts shows that even though Dota 2 is not at its peak popularity (although everything can change at any moment, especially before the International), it is still proudly stands among the top games of the platform.

Now players usually prefer CS:GO over Dota 2 (although these games are generally hard to compare, because the on;y thing they have in common is their developer). This sudden shift began back in October 2019, when CS:GO for the first time (and for the years to come) took the lead in the number of active players. It has been three years and CS:GO does not seem to be going down in rankings. Could this be the wake-up call that will show the developers that Dota is no longer the same?

Should we expect Dota 3?

Take a look at the comments below the latest Dota 2 updates in Steam and behold! People desperately want to know something about a new battle pass, fresh fixes meanwhile all Valve has to offer is… Yet another treasure chest and mysterious 2.6 GB update. A lot of players are disappointed in modern Dota not only because of the lack of interesting new features and regular in-game events, but also because of the famous toxicity (and you wish it was about SOAD song…) that is still blooming in MOBA. Thanks to that, during the off-season Dota 2 usually loses not only quite a number of its active players, but also most of its viewers as well. It barely manages to stay in top-10 most watched games on Twitch with such crowd’s favorite as: League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends and Rust.

Not all players think that mythical Dota 3 can solve all MOBA's problems, especially now, when developers actively try to stabilize gameplay, fix the most annoying bugs and keep adding new heroes (and we will surely get something new before or during International). Be sure that Dota still has a lot of players: those who only check in from time to time, and those who are talking about the game on Reddit and willing to know whether Dota 2 will ever see patch 8.0.

But truth to be told, do we really need a new game? Maybe it's better to make a second Reborn? Or just update an engine? Do people want something completely new, like more maps and missions?

What about you? What would be the most exciting for you in Dota 3? Would you play it?

And while we wait for any news about Dota 3 release date, you can read our Dota 2 news!