I don’t know how profitable Dota 2 is. Like HotS, once content and features are developed it could have low expenses. The point is Dota 2 gave away all its gameplay content (which may be a lot older than the game and traditionally free, complicating monetizing it) because it was used as a gateway to an entire money-making platform (Steam). Dota 2 is an exception, and you do not at all grasp how resource-intensive it would be to try pulling the rabbit out of your Hats.
In fact, let’s look at h ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota:
Valve’s interest in the Dota intellectual property began when several veteran employees, including Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker and executive Erik Johnson, became fans of the mod and wanted to build a modern sequel. The company corresponded with IceFrog by email about his long-term plans for the project, and he was subsequently hired to direct a sequel. IceFrog first announced his new position through his blog in October 2009, with Dota 2 being officially announced a year later. Shortly after, Valve filed a trademark claim to the Dota name. At Gamescom 2011, company president Gabe Newell explained that the trademark was needed to develop a sequel with the already-identifiable brand.
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An early goal of the Dota 2 team was the adaptation of Defense of the Ancients 's aesthetic style for the Source engine. The Radiant and Dire factions replaced the Sentinel and Scourge from the mod, respectively. Character names, abilities, items and map design from the mod were largely retained, with some changes due to trademarks owned by Blizzard. In the first Q&A session regarding Dota 2 , IceFrog explained that the game would build upon the mod without making significant changes to its core. Valve contracted major contributors from the Defense of the Ancients community, including Eul and artist Kendrick Lim, to assist with the sequel. Following nearly two years of beta testing, Dota 2 was officially released on Steam for Windows on July 9, 2013, and for OS X and Linux on July 18, 2013. The game did not launch with every hero from Defense of the Ancients . Instead, the missing ones were added in various post-release updates, with the final one, as well as the first Dota 2 original hero, being added in 2016.
Dota 2 is basically an ancient game that took its content from a presumably free mod. There’s nothing surprising that the product was the playerbase and attention that came with it, not the game they didn’t make and gave away for free. The developers who gave money to Valve to sell their games on Steam were the customers. Valve had its own games on the platform too. By the way, since 2016 and including the release of their first original hero they’ve released only 9 heroes! lol
This is the only thread that has simple, doable, potentially effective ideas for Heroes of the Storm’s predicament. Other posters are just shooting the breeze.
