Dota 2 Confirmed To Be Free To Play, Dota Store Launched

it was expected that Valve would be launching Dota 2 as a free to play game, but now it’s official: Valve confirmed that Dota 2 will be free to play, and now we can get an idea of what sort of microtransactions we can expect to see at launch.

Rather than following in the footsteps of League of Legends, Valve says that it won’t be charging for new heroes because, as the team put it on the Dota 2 blog, “We believe restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it’s something we plan to avoid.”

Additionally, Valve says that there won’t be any pay-to-win options, so the Dota Store, which happens to be open right now, will only be offering cosmetic items such as character and courier skins. Dota 2 will also have Steam Workshop support similarly to Team Fortress 2, meaning users can create skins for characters and, if approved by Valve, sell them.

“The opening of the Dota Store is a big part of our final push to launch,” said IceFrog, design lead on Dota 2. “With support for the Steam Workshop, the majority of the items made available on day one were created and being sold by members of the community. By making the game Free to Play, we hope to give gamers the ability to decide how – and how much – they want to invest in the game.”

If you haven’t managed to score a Dota 2 beta invite, you can also now purchase an “Early Access” bundle that nets you access to the game along with a few goodies. For more information on that, you can head over to the Dota Store.

Have you had the chance to play Dota 2 yet? If not, are you interested in trying it?