In Dota 2 there’s a new custom mode, developed by the Chinese team Drodo Studio. The mod is called Dota Auto Chess and on Sunday he played more than 100 thousand people. This means that it is about 30 times more popular than Artifact.

Despite the name, the mod is not particularly similar to chess, except for the fact that the action takes place on a “Board” is divided into 64 squares. The player’s task in fashion — to be the last survivor, which is achieved by obtaining gold, for which figures are purchased and placed on the field.

Dota Auto Chess hidden a few layers of complexity. First, the figures were the heroes of Dota 2, after each round the player gets a random set of characters available for purchase. Second, heroes can level up is possible with the purchase of duplicates. However, each pumping is a few duplicates. Third, each character has unique abilities, so you need to understand not only all dota2, but in how they are implemented in the DAC as they work together for racial, class and silovym sets. Fifth, the players available, things that you can equip on heroes, and you can get them killing creeps.

Oh, and in each round you must fight with either the creep wave or clone Board one of the opponents. Rand plays a big role, so the ability to calculate risk and probability is of great importance.

Between rounds, the player has a 30-second strategic round, during which players buy, pumped and placed figures. In each game there are 20 copies of each shape, so players must use strategy and to monitor what is happening in the 7 other boards to understand who, what heroes uses.

As you might guess, the entry level in the DAC is very high, but this is not all features that need to be considered. Despite this, the DAC is very popular — from 4 January, when it launched, it has already signed up about 700 thousand people.

the Valve would be worth to take a look at Dota Auto Chess. Perhaps it will help the company to pull the Artifact from Limbaugh.