Dota 2: The average number of players dropped dramatically, why?

A few months ago, the average player count of Dota 2 was on a downward trend than in 2014, according to statistics from Steam Charts. The average player count in January 2020 was even lower than in January 2014. The number for that month in 2014 was 393,860.

If we compare from January 2013 (This is the first time that statistics are available), we can see that January 2020 has the lowest player count since 2013!

Why is January a good month to compare? Usually when a season with The International closes, with a lot of big changes happening in the game. In January, gamers have gotten used to the new patch, spring activities have also ended and many people who have not played before will return to the game after a few months. The comeback month peaked in 2016 and has been steadily going down since. If compared closely, the period from 2019 to 2020 witnessed the largest drop in players in the past 7 years.

So what is the cause? According to the article, the theory is that after The International, the long wait for the new patch to appear prompted people to jump to games, and some didn’t really return to Dota after that. Another reason is the presence of neutral items in patch 7.23. November 2019 saw a slight increase in player numbers when the new patch arrived, but the numbers dropped again in December and January, possibly because gamers did not like the new patch. One major reason could be due to a change in the ranking system. Valve has continuously experimented with this system of its own quite a lot in the past few months, but still have not found the most reasonable solution. Valve’s only glimmer of hope is that player numbers have increased a bit over the past 30 days, but the reason for this increase could also be due to the release of patch 7.24. The best time to understand the impact of 7.24 should be April or May of 2020.

Whatever the causes, we can come to a pretty clear conclusion: Dota 2 player numbers are going down. It may slow down, but it’s happening. Valve needs to find the source of this trend to ensure Dota can continue to prosper in the future.