Game Breaking Linken Bug Can Crash Dota 2 Ranked Games

It is rare for Dota 2 to see bugs affecting the game in such a big way, but these past few months have seen a noticeable increase in these bugs. The free Vambrace bug, Dawnbreaker's Starbreaker bug, and the latest one where players in games can exploit their purchase of Linken's Sphere to prevent the game from scoring. As seen on popular Twitch livestreamer Janne "Gorgc" Stefanovski's stream, the game freezes and then becomes safe to leave when a player casts Linken's Sphere on an ally, proceeds to sell/deny the item, and an enemy casts a single-target spell on the ally with Linken's Sphere buff.

Linken’s Sphere bug makes Dota 2 games safe to leave

Gorgc was about to lose a very intense 72-minute ranked game when the Linken's Sphere bug froze the game, making it safe to leave soon after. Invoker, who was part of Gorgc's team, had used Linken's Sphere on Dragon Knight, sold it right after, and then an enemy cast a spell on Dragon Knight that triggered the bug.

Invoker already knew of the bug as a few minutes ago, he had already instructed his teammates to buy Linken's for the purpose of crashing the game since he did not believe they could win after conceding megacreeps. As it turned out, he put himself in charge to exploit the bug during a teamfight that was taking place just next to their naked Ancient and favored the enemy side.

With this long taxing game on Gorgc's livestream, the bug had received the attention it required to reach a broader audience. Threads about it have appeared on Reddit, and an issue has also been submitted on Valve's gameplay issues tracker on GitHub.

It is currently uncertain whether the flaw can be triggered during official games, however, the manner in which it is done, players will almost certainly be caught because Linken's Sphere is not an item that is usually sold or denied. However, in ranked games, this will become a major issue in instances when players on the losing side can trigger them with some execution.

Such bugs that have the potential to significantly affect the game's conditions are generally patched within a day or two by Valve. As a result, since this Linken Sphere one has already gained a lot of notoriety in the last day, it is unlikely to disrupt games for a long time.