Every year for the tournament The International Dota 2 Valve Studio produces Combat pass. A quarter of all revenues from Military pass goes to the prize pool of TI, that increases from year to year. Gamers are attracted not only by a desire to increase the prize Fund is the main reason why hundreds of thousands of gamers annually draw the Combat pass, the content is new, including unique cosmetic items, and exclusive modes for bought.

In 2017, BP introduced a full-fledged co-op campaign is high quality content includes two new maps and a good challenge, new enemies, expanding Laura and awards. In 2018 BP has mode battle Royale unfolding on a custom map. Additionally, the pass includes one special mode on a normal map with random modifiers.

Come 2019 and time of the next Combat pass. Last week saw the release of the new regime, which immediately caused gamers a feeling that Valve absolutely did not try to make something interesting.

this is indicated by several features.

first, the mode takes place on normal DOTA map without rule changes, and “Mo rokai” — resiny previous models, the new landscape creates problems with the frame rate, and some already actively use exploits to generate gold. The development of fashion, for some strange reason, took much more time, so Valve had to extend BP for two weeks.

What is particularly striking in this situation — Valve has invested unprecedented resources to run DOTA Underlords — his version of the popular mod Dota Autochess. Given that many game studios rushed to do counterparts, the industry believes that this may be the next fashionable trend, although the level of the battle Royal can be expected. Likely, Valve just took a team that was responsible for the Combat pass, the development of the Underlords as soon as possible to release the mode and win the war for consumers ‘ money. Even if the Combat pass buyers will receive a third-rate mode.

Why Valve can’t simultaneously work on Underlords and Battle pass is not clear.

But this is not the end. It is worth noting a curious situation that has arisen due to a bug that allowed players to buy multiple copies of bundles, getting extra boost for progress and content. When this became known, Valve did not solve the problem, as allowed to buy multiple copies of bundles, which led to a significant jump in purchases and, accordingly, profit for Valve.

Considering that the prize pool of TI once again beats the record — no thanks to Valve, and the Studio itself generates money even faster, while frankly not in compliance with its standard of quality, the question arises — why the audience allows you to do this and that for workflows in the Studio that do not allow to produce high-quality content to Combat the pass, creating a parallel Underlords.

What happens to the Vavle? Is only remained possible to maintain the current titles and release their own spin-offs based on the mod?