CS:GO is actually their biggest game now, but it does look like Dota 2 is dying. From a business perspective, they don't have any reason to try and save it though. They've lost ~40% of their players over the past 4 years, but are making more money than ever. The in-game tutorials have been unfinished for years, their Dota+ subscription service is all but abandoned (but still bringing in millions of dollars a year), and even cosmetics are mostly contained to a time-limited battlepass to take advantage of FOMO.

CS GO was abandoned by valve, community picked up the scene by creating their own leagues and tournaments. Only then valve gracefully came back to support CS :(

CS:GO is also going to trend downward soon with the release of Valorant, which is basically the same game with a few superpowers attached. All my friends who played GO switched over, they're attracting a pro scene, I think it's only a matter of time tbh.

I've avoided Valorant because it requires kernel drivers. But I'm in the minority, most gamers don't even know whats involved there.

I'll be a single counter-point. I straight up reinstalled Windows to play Valorant and all it's done is made me play a lot more CSGO. I'm legitimately having more fun with CSGO now than I have in a very long time! The game feels like it's in a super good place. It's got a ton of cool skins, the competitive scene feels really competitive at the moment, playing it competitively feels great. The DM mode scratches a very good itch, gun game is still a lot of fun, etc...

> Dota 2 is dying

I'm old enough that I remember people saying this in 2014. Actual data on active users - https://steamcharts.com/app/570#All. This indicates that it's far from it's peak of 1.2M active players but 700k active is still respectable.

> Dota 2 is by far their biggest game.

Not by players. That would be CS:GO (https://steamcharts.com/app/730) with 900k active players.

They've managed to make a Dota 2 tutorial that's worse than the 2014 one. And matchmaking for the new players is just brutal, there is no retention.

Personal story time, few months back me and my buddy got asked to help our non-dota friend get into the game. We are both playing occasionally in lower brackets.

Both of us created new account to so that noobie wouldn't be thrown into deep water right away. Note that me and my friend were 'baby sitting' - playing neutrally not trying to win vs lower rated opponents.

Out of 10 games 7 had hardcore smurfs in them. People in stack dominating their lanes. I don't see how anyone new and without any friends could possibly survived through such acid pool.

Imagine you are starting to play chess and 7/10 opponents are rated master and will crush you. And its kind of crush that you can't really learn from either.

I really don't see how dota can grow when there are so many alternatives.

Are you sure matchmaking didn't detect you were smurfing?

Nah we both play passive (avoiding aggression ourselves), besides blatant smurfs getting 15 kills by 20min are not tagged as smurfs. I just don't think there are any mechanisms to catch that and match noobies with other noobies. Instead they are sent straight into slaughterhouse.

To fix that problem you have game systems that are more random / forgiving in lower ranked games (remove the skill).

Then in the harder ranks you can dial back those mechanics and make the game more skill based.

Just a little tip for Valve there. I'm sure they're reading.

I am of the mind that any new player should play 10 games with bots at a minimum with tutorial driven gameplay.

Only after that should they be allowed multiplayer.

On a side note, the bots are not working since the latest patch.

900k active presumably includes the 50% of Deathmatch players that are zombies?

It's interesting to see there seems to be some evolutionary pressures at play as a couple of new routines are being used, not just 'rotate on the spot', one or two shoot now (yes, I got shot by an XP farming zombie) and one does epicycles which makes them surprisingly hard to shoot.

I think its actually someone in a computer lab in pakistan etc running 10 computers at a time and just selectively doing an action or two per account each round. CSGO has the same thing.

I would say since it was made free to play CS:GO (also Valve) surpassed Dota 2 and it is still rising.

The International has been growing every year.