Valve: New Plan Is To Release Dota 2 'As Fast As We Can'

Half Life developer Valve revealed today that it has altered its plan for upcoming strategy title Dota 2, explaining that it's now looking to "get it out there as fast as we can." The game's lead designer, known simply as IceFrog, noted on the official Dota 2 blog that feedback from beta participants has caused the company to change its strategy. "Our original plan was to spend the next year or so in beta, adding new features and slowly growing the number of heroes until we reached a level of parity with Dota 1, at which point we’d release Dota 2 to the world," he explained. "But the feedback we’re seeing everywhere is that people just want to play it, even though there’s still a ton of heroes yet to be implemented." He continued, "We’ve also seen that the folks who are already in the beta are chomping at the bit to show everyone else some of the fun games they’ve had. So we decided our original plan was dumb." Valve's new plan is to take the current version of the game, used as part of recent The International contest, and get it out to players as quickly as possible, via an invite-only system. Valve unveiled Dota 2 late last year, a follow-up to the popular Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients.