To Valve: I've spent over a thousand dollars on this game, I've driven cross-country to attend TI, and right now Dota Plus honestly has me thinking about picking up a different game.

I wanted to post about this, because hearing about Dota Plus today has me pretty upset.

Other comments on reddit have touched on the idea that it's unfair to give an advantage to some players over others, however small, and I agree with that. But I wanted to add something I don't think I've seen a lot of people saying: Good itemization and hero selection is part of your game. If people want to defer to third-party sites and services to make those decisions for them, that's their choice. But you are voluntarily replacing dynamic, rich, and fun strategic elements of Dota with an oracle that costs money to use. That is the essence of all pay2win models, and it's what makes pay2win such an egregious sin. The issue is not only that you give one player an advantage over another, it's that you give players the option to devalue their own experience. You are betraying your own mechanics, asking your players (at times complicated!) strategic questions then selling them the answer. I've spent the last decade wishing some of the bad actors in the gaming industry could understand this, and it's been a source of unending frustration for me. I don't want to see a game that I've played for 2000 hours progressively become a shitty mobile game or the latest EA release.

The other worry that first struck me this morning was a bit different, and not really related to whether dota was slowly becoming pay2win. The transition from a battle pass to a subscription service means that bells and whistles, interface reworks, and quality of life improvements can perpetually be subscription-only. Someone on your development team worked really hard on a fancy chart that pops up when you die? Subscription only. You roll out additional tabs on the profile or some other new feature? Subscription only! It feels a little bit like if I want the long-term attention of Valve's Dev team I'm going to have to pay $50/year to Valve until I die, which is on the scale of what I pay for a Prime Subscription or Costco Membership. Sometimes I can justify that expense and sometimes I can't, but either way it just seems critically unfair.

I love Dota, I really do. I've been playing for 6 years and I've gotten all of my friends into it. But this update is a bit much. I really hope Valve reconsiders.