Dota 2 Has Players Growing for Four Consecutive Months for the First Time Since 2016

The average player count of Dota 2 has increased for four consecutive months according to steamcharts, which is very pleasing news for the game's fans. It is the first time since February 2016 that Valve's flagship Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) has seen such an increase in player count. During April, May, June, and July in 2021, Dota 2 experienced positive user growth that increased its average player count by more than 30,000. Additionally, on 26th June 2021, two days after the Nemestice Battle Pass 2021 was released, the daily player count peaked at 734,277, which was the highest count since last May.

Dota 2’s player base is gradually growing

As the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) was restarted in January 2021, an additional 10,000 users joined the game, bringing the average player count to 432,671. Fans of Dota 2 endured two dispiriting months in February and March as the game lost more than 40,000 players, bringing the average down to 390,412.

In the following four months, however, the game has been able to breathe a sigh of relief. The number of players increased by 23,372 in April, 1,360 in May, 6,365 in June, and 1,646 in July. With this, the average user count reached more than 400,000.

What are the possible reasons behind this increase?

April has been the most successful month of the year so far. The game had a steady average player of around 700,000 for the majority of the part. After two discouraging months, February and March, this increase in April is likely due to two major factors.

The first one is the Dota 2 anime, DOTA: Dragon's Blood, which came out at the end of March. The anime was trending on Netflix in many Southeast Asian (SEA), South American (SA), and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, likely bringing new players to the game.

The second one is the return of premier Dota 2 LAN events in the form of Major Championships. The ONE Esports Singapore Major was held from 27th March to 4th April 2021, and was the first Major in 14 months. Until this event, the last significant offline competition in which top teams from all over the world participated was the DOTA Summit 12.

Despite some success in May and July, June was the second best month out of these four. Especially during the latter half of June, players flocked to the game after the release of the 2021 Battle Pass on 24th June. Although the community’s perception of the Battle Pass has not been exactly positive, it has nonetheless attracted a good deal of players.

Dota 2 also surpassed CS:GO on 26th June, when it recorded more concurrent players. Concurrent player counts for CS:GO usually remain above those for Dota 2.

It will be interesting to see if Dota 2 keeps adding players in the run up to The International 10 (TI10), given that Valve has not announced a lot of new additions in this time period. There is still time to see TI10, a new Battle Pass, an all-new game mode, and maybe a new hero.

On the other hand, it has been a long time since Dota 2's last patch was released, and if one does release soon, we might see both old and new players log into the game to survey the new changes.