Dota 2 is among the world’s most popular PC games as well as an esports. Boasting an active competitive scene, Dota 2 has maintained a healthy community with active and responsive relationship between fans and developers. However, October seems not to be a great month for Dota 2 as the average number of players declined significantly.
Launched on Steam back in July 2012, the game has attracted a good number of players even since beta. The game quickly rose to popularity thanks to the active competitive scene, bringing more and more people to the game. The player count grew steadily and hit around 400,000 in January 2014 and never dipped below that.
A recession for Dota 2
However, two months after The International 2019, the average player count has hit rock bottom as it went down to around 393,000 players. This could be linked to the recent change in the matchmaking system in game. The game no longer has separate Solo and Party MMR but replaces them with Support and Core MMR.
This, while giving people the incentive to play with friends, has actually shown the flaw in its system. While Valve tries their best to tackle smurf and boosting problem, they accidentally made it easier for smurf to ruin games. As of now, a party of 5 smurfs can boost their ranking in no time while comfortably playing their role.
Meanwhile, anyone with a try-hard attitude to get their ranks up often get frustrated when playing in unfair matches. How can you win in a smurf battle where every 5-man stack has at least one smurf. It would discourage people from playing in Dota 2 where you don’t have a fair chance of winning.
Meanwhile, CS:GO has managed to maintain a good number of players, even surpassing Dota 2 in terms of player count. If Valve doesn’t do something about it, Dota 2 may very well decline in popularity and their cash cow may not reach another impressive $30+ million The International next year.