Valve can buy back Dota Auto Chess, the explosive game phenomenon

With the Dota 2 mod, Auto Chess, continuing to grow day by day, sources say developer Valve is considering acquiring this product.

This popular mod has surpassed 4 million subscribers and at times reached 300.00 concurrent players. That’s a third of January’s Dota 2 community (950,487) playing Auto Chess.

Dota Auto Chess is a turn-based strategy game where you take on other players with your own pieces. The game has a tendency to build troops rather than play chess like the name of the game.

Since Auto Chess exploded in November 2018, this mod is getting more and more popular. Initially, Auto Chess attracted professional Dota players and then casual gamers and streamers gradually followed.

YO! I’m a DOTA 2 autochess specialist now =)

— Amaz (@Amaz) January 20, 2019

Since then, the unique strategy and Dota elements have attracted many gamers of other games, like Hearthstone, to join. The community continues to expand and we can see that the top stream on Twitch of Dota 2 is half Dota Auto Chess.

With a mod with a card game-like model and attracting such a large number of players (and viewers), Valve could not ignore it. According to VPEsports, Valve is looking for ways to acquire, commercialize and help develop Auto Chess.

Valve is well known for its ability to turn game mods into its own unique product, something it has done many times in Vavle’s history. Team Fortress started out as a Quake mod, Counter-Strike is a Half-Life mod, and even Dota 2 comes from a Warcraft III mod.

Valve’s attention to this successful mod is somewhat unexpected, because Artifact – a card game developed by Valve – is facing big waves.

A new DOTA 2 hero is coming soon to DOTA AUTO CHESS!

More updates than #Artifact#DotaAutoChess pic.twitter.com/k4RcBBa568

— Pinoy Game Store (@PinoyGameStore) February 13, 2019

Artifact was heavily promoted by Valve years before its release. However, after more than 3 months of launch, Artifact is having a terrible player count – the average number of players for more than 30 days, as of February 21, is only 1,000 people at a time. Just last week, that number just surpassed 400 players.

The game also didn’t get a lot of viewers on Twitch. According to TwitchTracker, the number of viewers of Artifact in February was less than 200.

With hopes of building a community and Artifact players lost after a few months, Valve now has more options for itself. If the developer acquired Auto Chess and hired the entire team to develop it, would Valve invest all of its resources into Auto Chess? That may cause them to take away funds or human resources from the Artifact team and switch to investing in this hot product.

That doesn’t mean Artifact will be left alone until it’s completely gone. Valve may still keep a smaller team to revive the title in the near future and make the breakthrough afterwards.

We currently do not know which direction the company will go, but with the success of this small mod, Valve will certainly not pass up the lucrative Dota Auto Chess bait.

According to Dotesports