DOTA 2 planned release in 2012

Gabe Newell, founder of Valve, has confirmed that DOTA 2 will be released in 2012 at the earliest.

Gabe Newell has been quoted saying:

“We’ll just go into progressively wider and wider distribution. I don’t think it’ll be shipped until next year. [But then] with a game like this, you just keep shipping. You add new heroes. You try out new game modes. You are constantly tweaking item and hero balance. It’s very much an ongoing thing.“

The game is currently played by invited teams at Valve’s tournament The International at Gamescom. As for the business modem that Valve will be using for DOTA 2 Newell stated that they “don’t have a plan” but he did add:

“For us now, this tournament is a really good step. A bunch of the features we’re building in the design of Dota 2 related to being able to put on a tournament like this. There’s a bunch of stat stuff. There’s a bunch of website development, support for simultaneous, four-language broadcasting.​”

As for those who can’t wait, the game is planned to have an invitation-only beta testing after Gamescom.

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