Is Valve Bringing Back Replay Takeover to Dota 2?

Recently, Chinese Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) 2021-22 league organizer Perfect World was forced to halt the series between EHOME and Aster.Aries due to an unresolvable Dota 2 client bug. After discussions with Valve, Perfect World has now communicated that the series will resume from the same state that it was in when game two was affected by the bug. This is very similar to the now-defunct replay takeover ability that was present in Dota 2’s Source 1 client. The ability to replay a game from an exact timestamp will allow teams some room to remake games, in case they encounter bugs.

This development comes after reports in September 2021 suggested that Valve was working on a new project to connect players to the point where a Dota 2 game crashed.

EHOME vs Aster.Aries series to resume from the point when the bug occurred

Following coordination with Valve, Perfect World tweeted on 1st July that the second game between EHOME and Aster.Aries will continue from the point when the bug occurred. The game will be played from the same exact state “including kills, gold/networth, game clock, and same draft and items.”

“The rescheduled time is 18:00 on July 4. See you then,” it added.

On 28th June, around seven minutes into game two of the series between EHOME and Aster.Aries, a sixth player icon appeared on EHOME's side, preventing the game from moving forward. The commentators suggested that EHOME's offlaner Nicholas "zeal" Lim Eng Han had become ‘a sixth player’ and could no longer control his hero - Nature’s Prophet.

As the bug could not be resolved, Perfect World had to stop the series midway, when it was 1-0 in favor of EHOME thanks to its victory in the first game. The organizer said it would notify Valve of the bug and then report back on how the series would progress.

Aster.Aries who had a better start to the game will be relieved to see it restart from the same state.

It's worth noting that Valve has finally built and implemented this feature that allows the replication of a scenario that exactly matches the one that occurred during a crash/bug. Dota 2 used to include a feature like this when it was powered by the Source 1 Engine before switching to Source 2 in 2015. Source 2, as evidenced in previous cases, most notably the "Abandon Bug," lacked such functionality.

In September 2021, Team Secret's Director of Operations, Matthew "Cyborgmatt" Bailey, discovered evidence of a feature in the Dota 2 game files that would be utilized to store a game at certain moments and then allow players to rejoin from the relevant point at a later time if desired.

It will be interesting to see if any crashed games or those affected by bugs in the future will also be aided by this feature.