In a surprising turn of events, Valve has decided to break its silence regarding the Dota 2 development cycle. With the Bali Major and The International 2023 on the horizon, the Dota development team has announced a complete shift in their approach.

The regular battle pass, a staple of the Dota 2 experience, is being discarded in favor of a new structure.

Source: Valve

Last year, Valve divided the annual battle pass into two distinct parts for the first time. One part was released in the run-up to the biggest Dota esports event of the year, and the other was launched right after the event, running through to the new year. This was a harbinger of the changes to come, as Valve is now stepping away from the Battle Pass entirely.

Dota 2 10th Anniversary Celebration

Valve is preparing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Dota 2 on July 9, and the team is hard at work creating content for the celebration. However, the update won’t be released on the anniversary itself. Instead, the developers have taken a moment to reflect on the past, present, and future of content releases for the game.

Since the introduction of The International Interactive Compendium in 2013, which later evolved into the TI Battle Pass, Valve has used these content drops as a way to celebrate all things Dota and engage the global player base. However, the battle pass began to overshadow content that was previously featured in other updates, absorbing minigames, item sets, cosmetics, voice lines, game modes, key functionality upgrades, and more.

This led to the “Battle Pass Season” becoming the most anticipated time of the year, attracting hundreds of thousands of new and old Dota players, while other updates were left feeling sparse in comparison.

Valve has started 2023 with the goal of extracting content that would usually be reserved for the battle pass and releasing it in other updates. The substantial New Frontiers drop in Patch 7.33 in April marked one of the most significant shifts in Dota. According to Valve, this would not have been possible if the old battle pass development cycle was still in place.

There will be no 2023 Battle Pass for TI12, but Valve plans to release a TI-themed update in September. This update will celebrate the competing players, highlight the event, and provide a way for players to contribute to the prize pool. However, it will not feature cosmetics as prominently as in previous years and will not be called a battle pass, signifying Valve’s departure from the past and their focus on the health of the game.