Battle passes, and other microtransactions unrelated to Gabe Newell’s company are no longer allowed in DotA 2’s unique game modes (DotA 2 Arcade).

There are two sides to the coin: some projects look particularly dodgy, but Valve’s game has had many decent developers contribute to it. SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik wrote on Twitter that Valve is demanding that developers of custom DotA 2 games stop monetizing in their custom game modes for the MOBA by August 17. In return, several popular mods have already disappeared. Custom game tools have made the community vibrant, and one of the frontrunners was DotA Auto Chess, a considerable success in 2019.

However, many game modes have PayPal or Patreon-based monetization, so instead of paying developers through Valve’s platform, you can do so outside of Steam for cosmetic items. These things give you an edge in gameplay or even battle passes. The problem? DotA 2 Arcade games are non-commercially licensed, but Valve, as usual, did not keep a close eye on events and let everything run its course… until now.

As early as 2020, there were complaints that money could buy abilities and items in a game involved, and there were many reports of what was a pay-to-win situation, whereby whoever paid was favored. Some posters are happy with Valve’s decision as they believe it is exploitative monetization, but another user has written an open letter asking Valve to reconsider.

LuminanceGayming wrote that the fair developers of DotA 2 Arcade should be settled because the first attempt by Auto Chess creator Drodo Studio was also monetized. He doesn’t want the “wild west” situation to remain, but formal monetization should be introduced, and Steam Wallet integration could be helpful. And Sunsfan and Jenkins, the developers of the monetized Ability Arena, talked about it in a video. They had met with Valve developers earlier, and at that time, they asked for it to be legalized somehow. They don’t like the current situation either.

So there will be some changes to be made…

Source: PCGamer