Chatting to Eurogamer at Gamescom, Valve big-cheese Gabe Newell has stated that Dota 2 will not be released until 2012.
As soon as the current $1million Gamescom Dota 2 tournament ends, Valve will launch an invitational closed beta for the game, before launching a public beta later on. Once the public beta has run its course “we’ll probably start worrying about how we’ll monetise it,” said Newell.
When asked more about how the game will make money, Newell said “we don’t have a plan.”
Many have speculated that Dota 2 will be free-to-play, or as the more sceptical among us like to refer to as “pay-to-win”, due to the fact that many free-to-play games provide a distinct advantage to those with money to spend in-game.
Right now, Newell is not worrying about that, insisting that getting the game just right is the current priority.
“If you have something with a super careful monetisation strategy and it sucks, it doesn’t matter,” said Newell.
“IceFrog has a bunch of testers he’s worked with as long as he’s been doing development. The first thing we’ve been working with is addressing their concerns. We’ve been through four or five different versions of the user interface, getting it to the point where we’ve addressed the feedback we’ve got from those guys.
“We’ll just go into progressively wider and wider distribution. I don’t think it’ll be shipped until next year,” said Newell, which will come as a disappointment to many as the game had previously been expected to be out later this year.
Newell added that “with a game like this, you just keep shipping. You add new heroes. You try out new game modes. You are constantly tweaking item and hero balance. It’s very much an ongoing thing.”
Earlier this week Valve revealed the first Dota 2 cinematic trailer, and screen-shots began to bubble to the surface.
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