Like it or not, the fact is that there are hundred thousands of people out there who prepare a few hundred dollars each year just to splurge on dota-related contents like the battle pass.
Battle pass sales in previous years hit close to US$300 million in sales (that’s why prize pools could hit $40million+).
But this year, the US$300 million that people prepared to splurge on dota? They spent it on other things instead because there’s nothing worth buying in terms of Dota content
I won’t pretend to know what is happening with Valve behind the scenes, but the sad reality is this year Valve for whatever reason decided to simply forgo this USD$300million in revenue/profits.
And of course less profits means less money for game development, it’s common sense. So by failing to earn this easy money, it feels to me like it would really hurt the future development of the game.
I mean all they had to do was recycle the cavern crawl, invest $1 million into making two quality arcanas plus 10+ immortals (surely $1million can easily achieve that?), make some sprays/balloons/fluff and BAM, USD$300 million in the pocket.
Makes 0 sense to me but hey what do I know, I guess the people making the decisions know better than me
Valve is 5 steps ahead. See, this player base assumed they kept the arcanas locked away so they could release them after TI and get 100% of the profit. In reality, Valve never made Arcanas. Can’t lose money on Dota if you don’t spend any developing it. Next level game dev strategy.