Just over a year after the 7.00 update, it seems that DOTA 2 is losing players. In April of the year, the MOBA reached a new low in terms of active player numbers.
Since the enormous peak of 14 million active players in January 2017, DOTA 2 has been showing a steady downward trend. According to a report from Superdatasearch, the number of active players has now dropped to 10.6 million this month.
Superdata is not the only site showing this downward trend. Steamcharts also clearly shows a downward curve in recent months.
The possible reasons for this are varied:
- Meta unchanged: Long drought periods between updates cause the meta to stagnate
- Newcomer friendliness: It’s hard for new players to get into DOTA 2. A new start is often associated with frustration
- Waiting for updates: Veterans are playing other games until the next update
The rapidly increasing popularity of battle royale games like PUBG has likely affected the DOTA player base as well.
Even though these numbers do not mean that the game is dead or dying, they represent a trend that developer Valve wants to stop.
Valve reacts to the decline
To counter the loss of players, Valve has made two announcements:
- Regular updates to combat content drought
- DOTA Plus Service, which is meant to replace the Battle Pass
Especially the Plus subscription is supposed to generate more revenue for Valve.
In the past, a portion of the revenue from the sale of Battle Passes was allocated to the prize pool of large DOTA tournaments, enabling astronomical amounts of money to be played for.
If the same applies to the Plus subscription, the prize pools of Valve’s tournaments will reflect the revenue from the subscription.
How are other MOBAs doing?
For comparison, here are the player numbers of other MOBA games on the market:
- Heroes of the Storm: 6.5 million
- Smite: 2 million
- League of Legends: around 100 million
These numbers come from Superdata.
Especially with LoL, there seems to be no end in sight. Riot is optimistic. According to Riot co-founder Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill, LoL has not yet reached its peak.
Whether the DOTA Plus model will help Valve offset the player loss is not yet clear.
More on the topic:
Dota 2 is getting an optional subscription: Dota Plus replaces Battle Pass
