Despite the development of e-sports in general, new record sums of the prize fund of The International, the number of Dota 2 players is inexorably decreasing. Paying more attention to the commercial component of the game, the developers are less concerned about ordinary players, which could lead to a certain problem.
Dota 2 is Doomed?
According to the service SteamCharts for the last month, online in Dota 2 has decreased by more than 10%. This is the second largest outflow of players in the history of Dota 2 (the first occurred in September 2015). However, this trend began in March 2016, and since then the average number of players is getting smaller and smaller (see the chart above). If a year ago, on July 2016, the average online was more than 638 thousand players, today this figure does not reach even 500 thousand. The only white spot in the past year was the release of the Battle Pass to The International 2017, after which the online players again crawled down.
One of the main reasons for the slow (if not the reverse) development of Dota 2 is the complexity of the game process. In the latest updates, developers have made many changes that should facilitate the understanding of the game for beginners. Moreover, on the very The International 2017 Valve promise to make a separate stream for new Dota 2 players. But how are they going to keep the old audience?
Summing up
The sunset of this game was prophesied even before it was released, however, Dota 2 is still alive and popular, and the prize fund of the TI7 broke all records. But what if Valve will continue to lose players/profits?
