Teamfight Tactics and Dota Underlords are just the beginning of the auto battle craze

Temporarily putting aside the battle royale, we now have a new game genre that is making waves. The auto-battle genre is attracting big game developers. Auto Chess is now considered a “must have” tool for game publishers.

Autobattler (auto battle) takes place on a map similar to a chessboard. Eight teams will battle each other one by one before finding the ultimate winner. The chess pieces of each team will be controlled by AI, the player is only allowed to set the position, not to interfere in the battle process. The big name of the genre is Dota Auto Chess, which launched earlier this year as a mod for Valve’s MOBA Dota 2 game. Since its launch in January 2019, Auto Chess’ player base has grown rapidly, reaching 9 million subscribers in just 6 months. Not long after, the developer Drodo Studios of this mod started developing its own version, completely separate from Dota and encroaching on the mobile game market.

Auto Chess Mobile: Deep dive into the mobile version of Dota Auto Chess

Those are just the starting signals before the big boys join the race. Last month, Valve told fans that it was developing its own version of Dota Auto Chess. Weeks later, Drodo announced his Auto Chess would be coming to PC via the Epic Games Store, and that same day, Riot Games – Valve’s rival in the MOBA wars – announced Teamfight Tactics, inspired by the game. Dota Auto Chess. From here, the Auto Chess market begins to heat up.

No longer mocking “Valve Time”, the first playable version of Dota Underlords (Valve) launched a few days after Riot’s announcement. The League of Legends developer immediately released Teamfight Tactics on the LoL PBE test server, but Valve did not hesitate to put Underlords in open beta.

While still relatively new, both games attract players at breakneck speed. Dota Underlords player count has reached 125,000 – more than Team Fortress at its peak. Teamfight Tactics is equally hot when players wait for hours to try to access the PBE server. Meanwhile, Drodo Studios announced a million dollar esports tournament taking place this year.

Thanks to books — and the movies that followed — like Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, the battle royale genre slowly made its way into popular culture, and then exploded with Fortnite and PUBG. On the contrary, Autobattler suddenly appeared, and now becomes a duel between the big boys.

It’s like history repeats itself. Like the battle royale, the autobattler genre has some general mechanics in which each version slowly adds its own ‘salt sauce’ to attract players. Game ideas easily turn into new titles. And yet, the development time is also short, helping this genre to be noticed by major publishers.

While still not quite as popular a phenomenon as Battle Royale, the opportunity is still open for major studios to participate in this craze. If Valve and Riot can act quickly, we won’t have to wait long to see other developers follow. Thanks to the large number of characters from Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard certainly will not pass up this opportunity. And yet, Hi-Rez’s Smite and Paladins are also considered potential rivals. Even Nintendo could participate, as the original Auto Chess was supposedly built upon a Pokemon-themed Warcraft 3 mod.