Dota 2 is considered one of the biggest names in the esports gaming industry. The game stands toe-to-toe with its counterpart League of Legends in terms of fan-following and player base worldwide.

One can spend hundreds of hours in the game and still be considered as a learner due to the vast variety Dota 2 provides as unlike other esports games. MOBA titles contains numerous characters to play with each having different set of skills and gameplay style.

With that being said, many of the players, be it newbie or someone that is well versed with the game mechanics are sure to find the following facts interesting as well as motivation to further improve their gameplay.

1. Most money spent on tournaments

Since its release over a decade ago, Dota 2 has been topping the charts of esports and games, and is also the biggest gaming platform now. The game reaches more than 600,000 players every day and was the most played games until a few years back.

The prize pool for Dota 2 tournaments is the biggest among all competitive esports game, with the highest amount reaching more than $40 million. Till January 2023, the competitive esports tournaments have crossed $280 million in prize money since the release of the game.

During ‘The International 2021’, where the prize pool surpassed $40 million, Team Spirit won the first prize and received $18 million in payout, which is usually the total prize pool of multiple years combined for several esports teams.

2. Dota took inspirations from different games

Dota originally started as a mod for Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft 3 and was actually called Defense of the Ancients. The developer ‘Icefrog’ later joined Valve and started working on Dota 2 as a separate, standalone game.

While being heavily inspired from Warcraft 3, other games like Magic: The Gathering, Diablo, Sega’s Phantasy Star series and other games also inspired the base of the game. Other games by Valve also started as mods for different games, like Counter Strike emerged as mod for Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 as a mod for Quake.

Since Dota 2 was a sequel to a game created by a different company, therefore Valve had to alter a lot of the game’s details to maintain its recognizability without infringing on Blizzard’s intellectual property.

3. Different customisation

While plain looking on the surface, Dota 2 have lots of customisation options for players who like to have different looks. These not only includes the character skins, but also different looks for maps and items or even the character weapon attacks.

The credit also goes to the steam community market, which allows players to sell and purchase these cosmetics. Another way to have different customisation is to purchase the battle pass. Being a free to play game, the game consists of a battle pass system that rewards players for simply playing the game.

These cosmetics are purely for visuals and aesthetic purposes and does not provide any advantage to players according to the developers. These customisation options are added as a way to support the developers, although some people argue that few customisations have a gameplay advantage, but that’s a topic for a different day.

4. Character voices

Dota 2 have many characters that players can choose, and it is also known that multiple characters have been voiced by a single person. Some voice actors have even voiced 4–5 characters.

What people don’t know is that Nolan North has voiced a total of ten heroes in Dota 2. Each game between two teams consists of a total of ten players, which applies that there’s a being voiced by the same person.

North’s character voice list include Brewmaster, Earth Spirit, Gyrocopter, Keeper of the Light, Lone Druid, Lycan, Meepo, Ogre Magi, Shadow Demon, and Troll Warlord.

5. AI bots have defeated professional players

After defeating the world champion Dota 2 team, OG, in two consecutive matches, OpenAI Five made history by being the first AI to defeat the world champions in an esports game during the best of three match tournament.

According to the developer, over the course of ten real-time months, OpenAI Five used 800 petaflop/s-days of experience playing Dota, which is roughly 45,000 years and had a success rate of 99.9%.

The AI have also partnered with professional players and received a very positive feedback. Players said that they felt the AI bot was playing much better than actual random teammates in a normal matchmaking.