Dota 2 hit lowest average player count since January 2013 last month

[texhnolyze]

While CSGO gaining traction, Dota 2 falters..

I believe the rise of mobile MOBA in many territories may be one of the main reasons.

A few months ago, VPEsports reported that the Dota 2 average player numbers were the lowest towards the end of 2019 since January 2014 according to the Dota 2 Steam Charts. Well, the average player count for January 2020 managed to dip below the January 2014 value. The average for the month in 2014 was 393,860.

If the numbers in January are compared from 2013 (the first time when the data was available in January), we can see that 2020 saw the lowest January numbers since 2013!

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Dota 2 average player numbers keep going down; January 2020 was the lowest the month has seen since 2013

A few months ago, VPEsports reported that the Dota 2 average player numbers were the lowest towards the end of 2019 since January 2014 according to the Dota 2 Steam Charts. Well, the average player count for January 2020 managed to dip below the January 2014 value. The average for the month in...

www.vpesports.com

 

[funky]

How is underlords doing?

 

[Horp]

I've tried getting into Dota 2 a couple of times, but the community in game is just the worst ever. Playing in sweden means 90% of people are russian, speaking russian except when they do shoutouts to my mom.

 

[GrrImAFridge]

How is underlords doing?

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About as well as CS 1.6 (both are currently in the 10,000~10,500 ballpark, and their respective peaks for the day are just a few thousand players apart, with 1.6 actually beating Underlords in that regard), although it'll probably get a shot in the arm -- temporarily, at least -- when it leaves beta in a couple of weeks.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I've tried getting into Dota 2 a couple of times, but the community in game is just the worst ever. Playing in sweden means 90% of people are russian, speaking russian except when they do shoutouts to my mom.

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Yeah, MOBAs tend to have insanely toxic communities, even worse than shooters or Rocket League which are already terrible. This and League are such a cesspool.

 

[Piston]

I wonder what League of Legends is doing yoy in comparison. I know it is still incredibly popular but I wonder if it has declined similarly.

 

[texhnolyze]

I feel like mobile is the perfect platform for MOBA, especially in this "toxic players" discussion.

On PC, people are so easy to put anything they want at every down time, even on hectic moments. But on mobile, typing while playing is such a hassle so there are considerably less chatting happening. People would simply use the chat macro/shortcuts because it's much easier and do the job most of the time.

I wonder what League of Legends is doing yoy in comparison. I know it is still incredibly popular but I wonder if it has declined similarly.

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They've stopped releasing players data to public many years ago, but I believe so. They're developing the mobile version of LoL which is proof enough.

 

[Deleted member 20831]

I have been in this game since (W3:TFT map) 2004/5 and really loved it, Dota 2 was a fantastic transition. But I just quit of sorts 4/5 years ago as the community was boat shit toxic and you get berated by players even in casual games.

Tried to go back once every year during The International window, but I skipped it last year nor watched the last International. Mainly due to how irritating it is to spend time in the game, I blame it completely on the large portion of community it still has.

The game is great, but the community is not at all by any standards friendly.

 

[Deleted member 49611]

i'm surprised it's took this long. insane learning curve and extremely toxic players. not welcoming at all to new players so it was just a matter of time before numbers dropped.

 

[jon bones]

League of Legends Wild Rift coming in for the killshot this year

 

[EloKa]

League of Legends Wild Rift coming in for the killshot this year

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Nah, Dota players usually insist that Dota is better than League because of its complexity. They won't jump down to an even more casualized version.

 

[Gush]

Glad I got out.

Fantastic game with incredible support from Valve but the community is a nightmare.

 

[Euler]

I wonder what League of Legends is doing yoy in comparison. I know it is still incredibly popular but I wonder if it has declined similarly.

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They've stopped releasing players data to public many years ago, but I believe so. They're developing the mobile version of LoL which is proof enough.

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Nah not at all.

They released some numbers for the 10 year anniversary a while ago.

Using the wayback machine because they redid their webpage a while ago so it's a pain to find old articles (old as in 6 months ago).

Join Us Oct. 15th to Celebrate 10 Years of League | League of Legends

web.archive.org

Every day we see about 8 million peak concurrent players in League.*
*Calculated as League's average daily PCU (peak concurrent users) for all Riot, Tencent, and Garena regions during the month of August

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League has typically been around 10x the size of Dota 2 but with the decline of Dota 2 playerbase it seems to be more like 20x now.

 

[Classy Tomato]

I think some people jump from Dota 2 to MOBA and battle royale games on mobile since they no longer have to visit internet cafe to play the games. At least that what I assume happened in my region

 

[Gowans]

I have hundreds of hours on dota 2, i stopped a free years ago.

Got the itch but started playing League, really enjoying myself.

 

[Musubi]

Honestly wonder if this is why Riot is heavily investing in other genres outside of MOBA now. It seems they are just not en vogue like they used to be. Not saying it's a dead genre but it sure doesn't seem to be attracting new players. And games like Fortnite really seem to be picking up in the esports scene.

 

[Piston]

Honestly wonder if this is why Riot is heavily investing in other genres outside of MOBA now. It seems they are just not en vogue like they used to be. Not saying it's a dead genre but it sure doesn't seem to be attracting new players. And games like Fortnite really seem to be picking up in the esports scene.

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Any game that has 350k concurrent users is still doing fine and League seems to have orders of magnitude more than that still. Riot is expanding because they have the resources to do so.

 

[pochi]

Asia moved on to mobile Mobas. Asia is the biggest market btw.
LoL Wildrift gonna be insanely popular when it comes out.

 

[jon bones]

Nah, Dota players usually insist that Dota is better than League because of its complexity. They won't jump down to an even more casualized version.

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honestly quarantining that crowd away from Wild Rift is great for both games

 

[Fevaweva]

Shame becasue the game has only gone from strength to strength imo.

 

[JoeInky]

This is a real shame because the game is the best it's been in a long ass time, I still play almost every night.

I'm assuming it has something to do with HL:A development as more people transitioned to that game because you can definitely feel the lack of support outside of balance patches these last couple of years.

Here's hoping it gets a bigger team and things turn around after HL:A releases but I'm not particularly expecting anything.

 

[DanteMenethil]

Yeah mobile mobas are HUGE in territories like India and SEA. Everyone there plays on their phone. Pubg mobile, mobile legends and honor of kings are insanely huge. I tried arena of valor a year ago on mobile and was super impressed on how well a moba can actually play on mobile. I had zero trouble jungling, ganking, choosing my targets, juking etc.

 

[Iztok]

As much as I dislike games losing their playerbase, this is a genre I have zero interest in so this gives me hope development resources will focus on something else instead.
As soon as they get over the autochess hump, I suppose.

 

[Le Dude]

I had a good time with DOTA2. Overall I probably clocked more than 1000 hours.

Games just take too long though, I have more stuff going on in my life and with finding a match, getting started, and playing the entire match . . . I was often out an hour or more. With everything I have going on, for me to commit to an hour time block is exceptionally difficult.

 

[danmaku]

Shame becasue the game has only gone from strength to strength imo.

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Yeah, the support has been insane so far, they changed so much that nobody would complain if they changed the name to DotA 3. I don't think the game is getting stale, quite the opposite actually, but it's so hard to learn, so stressful to play and it has such an awful community that it's not surprising if the casual fans are going away. Still one of the best games of all time, the design is pure genius.

 

[JoeInky]

As much as I dislike games losing their playerbase, this is a genre I have zero interest in so this gives me hope development resources will focus on something else instead.
As soon as they get over the autochess hump, I suppose.

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The reason its declining is likely because those resources are already being focused on something else.

Patches that change the meta are exciting for players already invested in the game but there are no exciting content updates, interesting game modes and after they had finished porting old heroes over the rate they created new ones felt drastically slower.

 

[Pimienta]

League of Legends Wild Rift coming in for the killshot this year

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Dota players don't like LoL most of the time.

 

[behOemoth]

I think their latest redesigns hurt the community a little bit. I really dislike that these games get ever more of everything making the games unnecessarily more complex. You can use over 200 items and you have a pool of over 120 heroes. It's started to getting really tedious.
However, I started Dota while guinsoo was in charge of the map and I think I will continue doing so.

 

[JoeInky]

Also they're wasting so much time on these spin offs when what they should really be doing is some kind of top down action rpg in the dota universe.

There are so many unexplored plot threads in dota lore that are ripe for expanding and digging into (I actually fucking love the story of artifact and the narrative of the first - and only - set of cards about the war between the bronze legion, red mist army and the vhouls).

Like how in the last battle pass with the earth shaker arcana we learn that he fought an interstellar being from another planet similar to the dota world and that there's a fear of more coming, that should have been an in game event or the map should have changed somewhat (atleast in non ranked modes) I'm itching for anything here.

 

[Aeriscloud]

honestly quarantining that crowd away from Wild Rift is great for both games

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Are we pretending like LoL doesn't have a toxic community now?

 

[708]

I wonder if they'll try to port (a more casual version) to mobile now that they have Source 2 up and running on it.

 

[astro]

Any game that has 350k concurrent users is still doing fine and League seems to have orders of magnitude more than that still. Riot is expanding because they have the resources to do so.

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Still doing fine and on a downward trend are not mutually exclusive. If the same is true for LoL as DotAw, I think diversification will have something to do with it.

 

[Piston]

Are we pretending like LoL doesn't have a toxic community now?

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It is significantly better than it was 5 to 10 years ago. Reporting works fairly well and players that go AFK, consistently rage, or are racist do not last long without getting banned. Building up an account after getting banned takes too long for it to be worth to have multiple accounts.

 

[Deleted member 28523]

everyone moved on from dota autochess onto the official autochess versions

 

[Deleted member 1589]

wonderful game.

but I'd rather watch the pro matches than play it now.

 

[Don Dada]

Count me as one who fell off. The game is really complex and requires constantly being in the loop on strats both for individual heroes and also team composition. It's just too intense to keep up with as I get older. I'm not sure how well valve are doing to onboard new players right now but they weren't very good at it when I last played.

I did watch the finals of the international 2019 and they have a fantastic fairytale story with OG. I'm not sure what valve can do to stop this decline but in any case they've got a strong IP with lots of great characters they should leverage it for a cooperative multiplayer game.

 

[lightning16]

I've been getting back into Dota this month after falling off of it hard the past year or two. Game is great right now. I just think the game is so hard to get into for new players that it's hard for the game to replace the players it loses over time at the same rate.

 

[texhnolyze]

Dota players don't like LoL most of the time.

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Yeah, and it's probably because Dota players have close connections to the heroes from Warcraft 3 era. The heroes have lores, and lots of them are taken from Warcraft 3 campaign.

I never get into any other MOBA because I simply don't know and don't care about the heroes which are mostly just a copy of Dota heroes.

wonderful game.

but I'd rather watch the pro matches than play it now.

Click to shrink...

Me too.

I haven't played in 4~ years but I still watch every single major tourneys. I'm planning to attend the ONE Esports Jakarta invitational in April.

 

[Chief Malik]

This will probably convince them to make new games instead of updating existing ones. HL:A a step in the right direction. The moba fad has moved to mobile tho.

 

[joe_zazen]

For anyone wondering why certain gaming 'communities' are toxic, here are two theories that i think explain things.

• Bartle player types: Some games attract a higher percentage of so- called killers. the further up and to left, the less empathetic and socially adjusted. They are motivated by seeing others lose and they are driven to be the only winner. I would rename this type the 'Bezos', or maybe ''USA Military-Industrial' type. p

• Hook—>habit—> hobby: this is the psychological path certain games designers try to get people on. The first phase is to offer something ineresting and compelling. Second is to get people playing and paying regularly. Final phase is to get people so involved, they have a compulsion to play and think about the game when not playing. The lastphase is where you get players addicted; and as casinos, tobacco, and crack dealers have taught us: addiction is the most profitable industry in the world. People prone to addictions have 'negative emotionality', that is they experience lots of anger, stress, and sadness. They often seek escape and relief through addictive, mind altering substances or activities. it isnt just videogames, natch. Even meditation can be an escape.

In sum, certain games are designed specifically to attract and retain high numbers of socially unpleasant people. So blame the devs, lol.

 

[C.Mongler]

I actually started playing a couple matches a week again recently. But I remember exactly why I stopped pretty quickly: the community for this game fucking suuuuuucks. People get so mad about shit so easily, and it's easily the worst I've ever experienced for the game currently. I can tolerate it for now since I took almost a two year break from it, but I assure you that when I quit again it's going to be because of some jackass spamming slurs in all-chat for the X-undreth time.

 

[Firebrand]

I've tried getting into Dota 2 a couple of times, but the community in game is just the worst ever. Playing in sweden means 90% of people are russian, speaking russian except when they do shoutouts to my mom.

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Not sure if living somewhere else would help:

But at least I never understood what they were writing, the English-speaking chat on the other hand certainly was... colorful.

 

[HylianSeven]

For anyone wondering why certain gaming 'communities' are toxic, here are two theories that i think explain things.

• Bartle player types: Some games attract a higher percentage of so- called killers. the further up and to left, the less empathetic and socially adjusted. They are motivated by seeing others lose and they are driven to be the only winner. I would rename this type the 'Bezos', or maybe ''USA Military-Industrial' type. p

• Hook—>habit—> hobby: this is the psychological path certain games designers try to get people on. The first phase is to offer something ineresting and compelling. Second is to get people playing and paying regularly. Final phase is to get people so involved, they have a compulsion to play and think about the game when not playing. The lastphase is where you get players addicted; and as casinos, tobacco, and crack dealers have taught us: addiction is the most profitable industry in the world. People prone to addictions have 'negative emotionality', that is they experience lots of anger, stress, and sadness. They often seek escape and relief through addictive, mind altering substances or activities. it isnt just videogames, natch. Even meditation can be an escape.

In sum, certain games are designed specifically to attract and retain high numbers of socially unpleasant people. So blame the devs, lol.

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I really think this flies out the window for Dota 2 (or even games of the genre period). Valve has been working very hard to curb toxicity in the game, and it's leaps and bounds better than it was years ago.

The base of what we know as Dota 2 today was based on a Warcraft 3 custom map, and no matter how much they change it, that's still what the game is at it's core: a custom map in a game that had zero microtransactions or way to make or invest any money.

Really if you want to blame anything about the game's design, you could argue the length of the game's and people feeling like it's a waste of time if dumb bullshit loses the game. But the length of the games is the nature of the beast with this genre and I wouldn't want that to change.

 

[Denzos]

I've been playing dota since WC3 days, I stopped 3-4 few years back with 1.6k hours on my steam profile.
I tried getting back in a couple times in the span of my hiatus but just the sheer amount of time i have to put in to get back in to competitive shape was daunting. Not to mention the toxicity of the players and the time it takes just to complete 1 match. I still watch TI and buy a compendium cause quite frankly, TI is hype as hell to watch.

Since my hiatus tho, I've found a new outlet for my competitive fix, fighting games. Not body to blame but yourself, and short matches where you can easily see your mistakes and adjust.

 

[Nere]

Game is amazing but Valve handled it incredibly bad. The community is the most toxic I have met in gaming and yet Valve does nothing to punish toxic players. Game is also full of smurfs and people with new accounts destroying noobs and new players and that's something that is encouraged by both the community and the pro players, who have multiple accounts. I tried to get my girlfriend to play with me and she was blamed for not knowing the game well while she was level 1, well no shit she doesn't know the game that early, but idiots who make multiple new accounts blame new players for not playing well, while they are the ones that shouldn't be there in the first place. As I said the game itself is amazing but Valve deserves what is happening to it, since they don't give a single fuck.

 

[EloKa]

I tried to get my girlfriend to play with me and she was blamed for not knowing the game well while she was level 1, well no shit she doesn't know the game that early, but idiots who make multiple new accounts blame new players for not playing well, while they are the ones that shouldn't be there in the first place.

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Did you guys play ranked or unranked mode? Because in unranked mode people usually don't care what you do and it is kinda impossible that you meet smurfs in unranked mode because there is literally not a single reason for them to create a new account to play in an un-ranked game. But it happens kinda often that a pre-made duo joins the ranked mode with one of the two players having only played the game for maybe 3 or 5 hours or something. If that new player decides to play an important position then you know that you'll definately lose the game, lose MMR (rank) and lose 30 or 60 minutes of your lifetime because somebody else made a selfish and kinda stupid decision. There used to be a rule of thumb that you should have around 100 hours of ingame experience before you enter the ranked mode.

 

[ProfessorRad]

I just got into DOTA 2 the last two months and have 250 hours clocked. I love the game, but it has so many glaring issues and mobile gaming is the least of it:

*Queue times
*Having to queue for shit you don't want to play
*Smurfs, lots of them, every game
*MMR isn't done well. Climbing out of a losing streak becomes impossible.
*Toxic AF community
*Not good enough at teaching much of anything

That said when the game fires on all cylinders there isn't any game that can give me the euphoria this does.

With TI10 around the corner I imagine we will get a major update to the game bigger than 7.23 , or straight up DOTA3 or DOTA mobile.

Something big is needed to keep it relevant other than the e sport scene.

 

[Big-E]

I have not played a game in over a year and I think I won't be back. I played DotA since the beginning but I am getting too old for it. It is impossible for someone like me who can play maybe 2 or 3 games a week to climb. If my first game of the week is poor, I wasted my game time. It just isn't worth it.

 

[BasilZero]

I mean you obviously have to had gotten bored if you clocked in so many hours on it eventually...I sure did after 150 hours

 

[fluffydelusions]

Nah, Dota players usually insist that Dota is better than League because of its complexity.

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This is actually why I prefer LoL nowadays (not that I play either game much anymore). Every time I come back to DOTA after a long break so much has changed and it feels like I have to relearn everything while this is not the case with LoL.